The City and the House

by Natalia Ginzburg

  Copyright © 1985, 2011 by Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a.

  Translation copyright © 1986, 2011 by Dick Davis

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  Arcade Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or arcade@skyhorsepublishing.com.

  Arcade Publishing® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Originally published in Italy under the title La Citta e la casa

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Visit our website at www.arcadepub.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  ISBN: 978-1-61145-624-0

  Books by Natalia Ginzburg

  All Our Yesterdays

  The Things We Used to Say

  The Little Virtues

  The Manzoni Family

  Valentino and Sagittarius

  Family: Family and Borghesia, Two Novellas

  Road to the City

  Voices in the Evening

  GIUSEPPE TO FERRUCCIO

  Rome, 15th October

  My dear Ferruccio,

  I booked my ticket this morning. I leave in six weeks, on 30th November. I sent off my three trunks a week ago. There are books, suits and shirts in them. Phone me when they arrive. I know how much you prefer the telephone to letters. I’m the opposite.

  I am very happy to be leaving. I am very happy that I’ll see you again. My life here has become difficult recently. I couldn’t breathe any more. When I decided to come and see you I was able to breathe again.

  I am also very sorry to be leaving. I think I shall miss certain people and places I’m strongly attached to. I don’t think I’ll make new friends. I’ve become rather solitary over the years. I have had some friends here, not that many, and I shall miss them. But there has to be something to put up with. I shall be with you and that will mean a great deal to me. I am very fond of you, as you know, and I have been painfully aware of your absence all these years. Your visits were short, and few and far between. I enjoyed them, it’s true, but at the same time they upset me because they were short and because I was always afraid I bored you; I was always afraid that being with me meant very little to you.

  I often wonder whether you are pleased that I’m coming. True, it was you who told me to come, but sometimes I feel that perhaps you regretted this afterwards. But if you have had regrets, let’s say no more about it at this stage. I have booked my ticket and I am definitely leaving. I will try to be as little financial trouble to you as I can.

  I am coming to America like someone who has decided to throw himself into the sea and hopes he will emerge either dead or new and changed. I know this kind of talk irritates you, but this is what I feel and I want you to know.

  With love from,

  Giuseppe

  GIUSEPPE TO LUCREZIA

  Rome, 20th October

  My dear Lucrezia,

  I don’t think we shall see each other again. I think yesterday was the last time. I told you that I might come again, next Saturday, to Monte Fermo, but I don’t think I shall. Yesterday evening as we were coming through the gate I looked up at Le Margherite, and I thought that I was looking at your house for the last time. I don’t think I shall come and see you again. And I don’t think you will come to Rome. There’s no point. Don’t come on my behalf. I said goodbye to you yesterday, and I don’t like saying goodbye to people twice. Don’t phone me, and I won’t phone you either. I don’t want to hear your voice, nor do I want you to hear mine. I prefer this sheet of paper.

  You told me that you will come and see me in America. But I don’t believe it. In all the years I’ve known you I’ve never seen you set off on a long journey. The only thing I’ve seen you do, in all these years, is to jump in your beat-up old Volkswagen that stinks of wet dog to get to the market in Pianura. And so I think the last time I’ll see you was yesterday, on the station at Pianura. You had on your shaggy white woollen jacket with camels embroidered along the edge, and rather grubby white trousers, your hair was gathered on top of your head and one lock of it hung down on to your neck, and you were leaning against the wall. That’s how I remember you. You were very pale. But then you are always pale. While he was waiting for the train to arrive, Piero said, ‘Why don’t you get the next one, it leaves in an hour?’ I am very fond of Piero. I stood at the window and saw the three of you: you, Piero, Serena. Piero had his thick red scarf on. Serena was eating bread and cheese. You were leaning against the wall. That’s how I remember you. Piero’s sweetness and seriousness. His blond curls that are always a little greasy even when it’s cold. Serena with her juniper covered in crumbs. Your height and pallor, the black lock of hair hanging down on to your neck, your hands in your pockets.

  I shall do various things in the few days before I leave. At the moment I have to buy some shirts, a winter suit and an overcoat. Then I have to empty my flat. Not of its furniture but of everything which is of no use to anyone, old papers, old letters, old pots, old rags. Not the furniture, because as you know the Lanzaras are buying it with the furniture. Roberta says everything’s going for a song. But you know how Roberta is. She immediately assigns every object a name, an importance and a financial value. I see Roberta a lot these days. She comes up and helps me empty the drawers. According to Roberta, my selling the house is a real piece of lunacy. Never sell bricks and mortar, never. You should hang on to bricks and mortar for dear life. And people have offered her immense sums for her flat, which is immediately under mine and is the same as mine, and she has refused them because she wouldn’t dream of letting it go. But how is it possible that the Lanzaras are paying so little.

  My dear Giuseppe, she says to me, the Lanzaras are leading you up the garden path. And what will you do if one fine day you decide to come back? I answer that I don’t think I’ll ever want to do that. This is how we talk whilst we are emptying the drawers. Every so often we look at photographs of our relatives, and of when we were children, Ferruccio, Roberta and me, on the beach or skating.

  The other day as we were walking in the woods Piero asked me ‘Why are you going to America?’ Usually when people ask me this I say the same things. I’ve no money. I’m tired of writing articles for newspapers. I’m sick of newspapers. My brother in Princeton knows a great many people. He teaches biology at the university and is very well thought of. He’s lived there for many years. He’ll find me a job. He has already made enquiries. I shall give Italian lessons in small schools. Teachers are well-paid in America. And then my brother is well-off and has no problems. I don’t imagine I shall be completely dependent on him, but it’s true that I will be to a certain extent. I shall do the housework and prepare meals. You know that I’m good at housework and very quick. I would like to live in Princeton, a tiny town that I’ve never seen but which I can imagine because my brother has told me a lot about it. I would like to live in a tiny American town. I’ve never seen America and now I’ll see it. I shall use the library at Princeton. There are lots of libraries there. I shall at last educate myself. I shall have peace in which to work and stu
dy and I don’t ask for anything else. This is how I want to prepare myself for my old age. I have never managed to do anything and I am nearly fifty. I could go to America for a year and then come back. Well, I don’t know. I don’t like travelling. For some time now I’ve wanted to decide what to do, and then do it once and for all.

  I like the idea of staying with my brother. He is only a little older than I am but he always led me and advised me when we were boys. I am an insecure person. I need someone who will reassure me. My brother is a man who has all the qualities I lack, he has a calm temperament and thinks clearly. I am very attached to my brother. But, said Piero, when your brother was here you were very depressed and seemed as if you hoped he would leave again. This is true. Having him in my house all the time wore me out. This is a house in which I am used to being alone. Finding him sitting in the living-room when I got up in the morning bothered me, and so did having to decide what he should do every day and who I should arrange for him to meet. Finding his striped dressing-gown in the bathroom bothered me. I’m not a hospitable person. I don’t like having guests in the house, nor being the guest in someone else’s house. But it won’t be a question of guests in America: neither of us will be a guest. We shall be two brothers living together.

  As soon as I get up in the morning I start to think of everything I am about to leave, of everything I am going to miss in America. I am leaving you. I am leaving your children, Piero, your house called Le Margherite, though goodness only knows why you called it that as no marguerites are to be seen there, nor even anywhere near. I am leaving the few friends I always saw at your house, Serena, Egisto, Albina, with whom we used to go for walks in the woods and with whom we used to play cards in the evening. I say ‘used to’ but this is a mistake, because you will continue to go for walks and to play cards, and the ‘used to’ refers only to me. I am leaving my cousin Roberta, a splendid, noisy, interfering, rough diamond of a woman who is devoted to everyone. I am leaving my flat here, where I have lived for more than twenty years. The fake-fur armchair with a plaid over it where I sit in the mornings as soon as I wake up. The four-poster bed with thin wooden columns where I finish up in the evenings. The kitchen window that looks on to the convent garden. The living-room windows that look on to via Nazario Sauro. The newspaper kiosk on the corner, the Mariuccia Restaurant that I occasionally go down to for a meal, the sports equipment shop and the Esperia Café. I am leaving you. I am leaving your broad, pale face, your green eyes, your black locks of hair, your swollen lips. We haven’t made love now for three years, but when I see you I always have the feeling that we have done so yesterday. Whereas in fact we shall never do so again. That day at Viterbo you said ‘Never again’. I am also leaving Viterbo behind, that hotel and that room I hated, and to which I returned by myself, last summer, for no reason whatsoever. Perhaps because I was very unhappy and I wanted to be even more so. I asked them to give me that exact room, number twenty-three. I often think about that room, and I shall think about it in America: I shall miss it, because we also miss places we have hated. But perhaps in America that room will be vaguer, more distant and innocuous. As for my son, I can’t say I’m leaving him behind because I don’t really know where he is, and I might see him more often in America, as long journeys are no problem for him.

  Say goodbye to your children for me. I sort of said goodbye to them yesterday; I waved to them as I was passing through the kitchen where they were watching television and eating. I didn’t want to stop and kiss them because I would have been upset and this would have been ridiculous to them; they would have carried away a ridiculous impression of me. Say goodbye especially to Cecilia, who is the child of yours I like best. You have told me that you think Graziano is my child, but you are probably mistaken, seen from behind he is just like your mother-in-law Annina. Cecilia has very beautiful eyes and she reminds me a little of my sister who died young. Daniele has a natural talent for drawing, as I did when I was a boy. Obviously neither Daniele or Cecilia are mine because they were born when I didn’t know you, but what I mean is that I find something congenial in all your children except Graziano. Even the little one is quickwitted and charming. He isn’t mine because he was born a year after Viterbo, and anyway he is identical to Piero. I find Graziano rather uninteresting, he’s a real know-all. Perhaps it is those glasses that make him look like a little professor. The other four seem much nicer to me. But perhaps attributing the paternity of the least interesting of your children to me is part of your spite-fulness against me.

  Nevertheless, because you said Graziano is mine, I watched him carefully yesterday, whilst I was walking past and they were eating. He was eating a big plate of stew and polenta; he was serious, with his glasses on the end of that freckled nose of his. He was wearing his flannel pyjamas and was as red as a lobster, perhaps because he had just had a bath. That’s how I remember him. None of your children are like you; they have freckles and red, puffy cheeks, none of them have your splendid pallor.

  Anyway, believe me, none of your children is mine. They are all Piero’s. He is an excellent father and they have no need of any other. The only child I have is Alberico. I would have liked someone different. But that certainly goes for him too. Who knows how many times he has thought that he would like to have a different father, someone other than me. When we are together we find it extremely difficult to say the simplest things to each other. I never say much about Alberico. I don’t say much about him to anyone. I think my cousin Roberta has talked about him to you. I have a photograph of him hanging on the wall here, Roberta took it when he was five years old and my wife and I were still together. He was a beautiful child. I loved him, it’s not difficult to love a child. I loved him but I never wanted to stay with him for very long. He soon bored me. I also have a photograph of my wife on the wall here, a frail girl enveloped in a shawl. She bored me too. All right, I was easily bored. I was very young and I was afraid of boredom. I am no longer so afraid of boredom but I was then. I was bored by my wife too. I found her stupid. I was bored with the child because he was a child, I was bored with her because she was stupid, and this was a particularly wearisome boredom. Before I married her I had not realized that she was so stupid, but then I gradually discovered how immensely stupid she was. She didn’t find me stupid, though she did find me boring, and she found that I didn’t give her enough of the things she wanted. Not enough love; not enough distractions and acquaintances; not enough money. And so Alberico spent the first years of his life with two people who were bored by each other. We separated. She and Alberico went to live in a flat in Trastevere. She took a lover, a cousin of hers who had been a childhood friend. She spent a lot of time away from the house and she left the child with Aunt Bice, a relation of my mother’s. Two years after we separated she became ill during the summer and no one realized what was the matter with her. She had polio. We - Aunt Bice, her childhood friend and I - took her to a clinic. She was dead within a few weeks. Alberico was away at a summer camp and he had to be fetched. I didn’t go; Aunt Bice went. Afterwards Aunt Bice always did everything. Alberico went to stay with her for good. My parents didn’t want him because they said they were old and tired. My wife’s parents were dead. I didn’t want him because I just didn’t feel up to it. The childhood friend had gone off to live in Venezuela. Alberico was taken to Aunt Bice’s flat in via Torricelli, and he stayed there. Then Aunt Bice made her will and left everything she had to Alberico. And Aunt Bice was rich too. She didn’t look it, but in fact she was rich. She was a general’s widow.

  Alberico was ten when he went to live in via Torricelli for good. He was a quiet, biddable, docile child and didn’t cause any bother. He studied hard at school and he enjoyed it. Though I thought that all that boredom between my wife and me, which he had breathed in when he was little, must have poisoned him and that one day it would somehow or other burst out. I went to fetch him now and again and took him to the newspaper offices with me. At that time I had a steady job at the newspaper a
nd I spent many hours every day there. Then I used to take him out to eat in a restaurant, and I’d take him to the cinema or to the Villa Borghese. I was bored and unsure of myself. I didn’t know what to say to him. I talked about when I was a child. About my brother and me when we were children. About his mother. When I talked about his mother I tried to see her again as I had seen her when we first met, but this was not easy because memories of our later years immediately came to me. Alberico used to listen. He often mentioned Uncle Dé, his mother’s cousin, the childhood friend. He seemed to me to be the person he cared most about in the world. When he mentioned him his face lit up. Uncle Dé had given him a stamp collection and a globe of the world. He occasionally sent him stamps from Venezuela. I used to take him home again and leave him at the front door, and go back to the newspaper with light, quick steps and a feeling of relief that I was alone again.

  One day Alberico ran away from home. We found him a long way away two days later, at the end of Corso Francia. I remember that Uncle Dé, the childhood friend, had lived in that area while he was in Rome. Once or twice I thought to myself that I would write to Uncle Dé and suggest that he be in touch with Alberico as often as he could. But I didn’t do it. I knew that Uncle Dé was working in a construction company in Venezuela, and that he was married. I think he soon stopped sending stamps.

  Alberico ran away from home many other times, and we had to scour the city for him. Aunt Bice used to call me up and we spent days looking for him, in streets, in the public gardens, in police stations and railway stations. We would come across him sitting calmly in police stations, silent, in his blue anorak, with his little cardboard suitcase on his knees. He was very attached to that little suitcase and when he ran away from home he always took it with him. He kept cards of football players in it. When he was fourteen he still seemed to be a little boy. He had a rosy-pink complexion, with smooth cheeks and angelic curls. Now his curls are those of an old sheep, long, straggling, loose and soft; he always seems tired, and he has a short bristly beard; he is often dressed in black and looks like a hearse. When he laughs you see his marvellously white teeth. But then he doesn’t laugh very often. I think all that boredom which he took in from his mother and me when he was little has now come to the surface, as I had expected it to. He started to read Political Science, then he left university and took up photography. But perhaps he would rather be a director - of films, or in the theatre - or an actor. He doesn’t know. He’s always changing his mind. It’s very tiring for me to keep asking him what he wants to do. Actually I have never really known what I wanted to do either and I have spent my life asking myself. If I asked myself this without getting a clear answer, why should I expect a clear answer from him? At first I didn’t mind working at the newspaper, then I became thoroughly disgusted with newspapers and now I’m leaving Italy. The difference between him and me is that I have no money, whereas at the moment he has, thanks to Aunt Bice. On the other hand he is already twenty-five. He is a man. According to Roberta I ought to suggest something to him, but I don’t know what kind of suggestion I could make. When I see him in front of me, my only concern is to annoy him as little as possible. Bore him as little as possible. I always think of that immense boredom that existed between me and his mother, which he drank in sip after sip, day after day, when he was a child. The last time Alberico turned up was last April. He came from Agropoli. He was travelling with someone called Adelmo, a short, muscular, bandy-legged character. They left two identical rucksacks, stuffed to bursting, in the entrance hall downstairs, then they had a shower and flooded the bathroom which they left strewn with sweatshirts, vests and socks. I called Roberta up, because Roberta feels very sympathetic towards Alberico and makes it easier for me to be with him. I left them in the front room and washed the sweatshirts, vests and socks. Then I made trenette col pesto. Whilst we were eating Alberico said that he wanted to sell the flat in via Torricelli, the one that Aunt Bice had left him. Roberta was alarmed. Never sell bricks and mortar, never. You have to hang on to bricks and mortar for dear life. Alberico said that he wanted to move to the country and raise rabbits and chickens. He and Adelmo went off to bed. I had made a bed up in the room at the end of the corridor, the one I call ‘Alberico’s room’ even though he has hardly ever slept there. Roberta and I were left alone together. She asked me if I knew that Alberico often went to the California Bar. I told her that I didn’t know anything, and that I didn’t even know where the California Bar was. She said it was in the via Flaminia area and that it was a foul place. I didn’t sleep a wink that night. In the morning I sat in the front room making up questions and phrases and repeating them to myself under my breath. But when I saw Alberico in front of me all those questions and phrases stuck in my throat. He and Adelmo were already dressed and ready to leave. I made them coffee and toast. Whilst they were eating they talked quietly about their own affairs. The vests and socks I had washed for them were still wet but they wrapped them in towels and newspapers and stuffed them into their rucksacks anyway. They were off to London they told me. But two weeks later I heard that they had been arrested in the California Bar. The whole California Bar finished up in prison. Alberico was in prison for a month, you know this because I’ve told you about it. I was waiting for him at the prison gate when he came out. Roberta told me he was coming out, she had heard it from the lawyer we had engaged. I watched him emerge, he was listless and tired, calm, in a thick leather coat with a bundle of clothes under his arm. Adelmo wasn’t with him. Instead he had with him a plump, red-haired character dressed in grass-green overalls. I asked him where Adelmo was but he said he didn’t know anything about him. I asked him to come back home with me; he said he might come for lunch but at the moment he had things to do. He offered me his hand and I kissed his thin, black, bristly beard. Then I saw them disappear side by side - the green overalls and the leather coat - along the Lungotevere. He didn’t come to lunch that day and for a while I heard nothing about him. Then I heard that he had sold the flat in via Torricelli. Roberta told me. He had got a good price for it. He’s sly, Roberta said to me, he doesn’t look it but he’s sly; he loves money and always knows how and where to get hold of it. What makes you think he loves money I asked her, this love of money isn’t apparent in the way he lives. You don’t know him, Roberta said. It’s certainly true that I don’t know him. A few days ago he wrote to me from Berlin. He’s working on a film. For the moment he doesn’t intend to come back to Italy. Perhaps after the winter. The letter had the address of an hotel on it. I phoned him and told him that I was going to live in America. He said it seemed a good idea. I asked him to come and say goodbye to me before I left. He told me that he didn’t think he could travel, because of the film. We would see each other in America, in some American city where one day or other he might happen to turn up. The film is a film about Ulysses. He is the assistant director but they have also given him a little part, the part of a shepherd who sits on a rock and plays a pipe.