The City and the House

by Natalia Ginzburg

  Today I was at the Women’s Centre with Albina and Serena and we cleaned up the floor a bit, then Serena climbed up a ladder because there are two little windows with grimy glass covered in cobwebs. She wiped them with newspapers while I held the bucket for her, but they stayed grimy from top to bottom just as before.

  Albina and Serena say that I should come to Rome and talk to you and persuade you to stay in America for a fortnight or a month but no longer. They say America is not your kind of place. But I think you will enjoy being in America and if I had a brother in America who said to me come and stay here for good, I would go immediately. I would take all my children and go. But I don’t have any brothers, neither in America nor anywhere else, and you are lucky that you have this brother in Princeton, a town that’s full of squirrels and trees. A town that must be solid, orderly, clean and hospitable. You will say that here I have all the trees I could want and that though there aren’t any squirrels, there are lots of other animals, cats and dogs and rabbits and hens. Our place is smothered in trees and animals. Since I was a girl I’ve wanted to live in the country and have lots of children. I have had what I wanted, but meanwhile I’ve become a different person. The children are fine, but I’ve had it up to here with the country. I want to have a town around me: Princeton. Instead, I only have fields and woods around me. If I stand at the window and look at this countryside with its fields and woods and vines I don’t feel a sense of peace but of fear. When we bought this house I thought it was really beautiful -so big and yellow and old, but now there are days when I can’t bear it, not the front nor the back nor inside it. If I make the effort to get to Monte Fermo, I find a village of fifteen houses leaning over a ravine, of old women sitting on steps, and of hens. If I make the effort to get to Pianura I don’t find a town but another village, a big crowded noisy unpleasant village and I’m fed up to the back teeth with that too.

  I told Piero that we could sell this house and go and live in Perugia or even in Rome. He doesn’t want to hear of such a thing. He is happy here. He doesn’t see the countryside much because he spends his days in Perugia and only comes back here in the evenings. He is only here on Saturdays and Sundays and friends come then and he likes it.

  Later still.

  As far as your son is concerned, I want to say that if he won’t come and say goodbye to you before you go, you should go and say goodbye to him. But you don’t even think of such a thing. You just break things off with hardly a word. You let him go with hardly a word. You should at least feel a little curiosity, find out whether he is getting on all right in Berlin and how this film of his is going. What do you mean he is already twenty-five. Someone can suffer from the absence of his parents at twenty-five, even if it is he who wants to be away from them because he has decided that he doesn’t like them at all. But he will be secretly pleased if his parents run after him.

  At twenty-five I had been married for three years and I already had two children, nevertheless my mother still gave the orders and I obeyed them. I phoned her ten times a day to ask her how I should dress and what I should cook and she answered everything point by point in that thick voice of hers. I had married Piero because she liked him, she thought him a good man, serious, calm, ‘a worker’. I married Piero because he was ‘a worker’. She made me see everything she liked through rose-tinted spectacles. She even liked Signora Annina, Piero’s mother, who is in fact a pest, and she and Signora Annina went off on little trips together. When I married Piero I realized that I had done well, reasonably well, but I knew that in marrying him I had only obeyed my mother. Then we lived in Florence, my mother in one house and Piero and I in another, in the same street. Signora Annina was living in Lucca and appeared every now and then. My mother had chosen our house, she had even chosen the furniture and the disposition of the rooms. My mother was a strong, robust, energetic woman who went about the city every morning busying herself with prisoners’ families. She went marching around the city with her military step and flat shoes and a bag over her shoulder. She had a thick, deep, hoarse voice. After I got married she lived alone, with a serving woman called la Lina, and in the evenings she and la Lina knitted things, always for prisoners’ families. With my mother, Piero and la Lina I felt protected, safe, secure; it seemed to me that they would keep every danger, every disaster away from me. Then my mother became neurotically depressed. But you know that, I’ve already told you. She began to complain of headaches and insomnia. The doctor examined her but there was nothing wrong, she was healthy. Bit by bit she stopped going out of the house, washing herself, eating and knitting. She sat in an armchair in her drawing-room, in semi-darkness, with her hands in her lap, and stared at a point on the carpet. When I phoned it was always la Lina who answered, by that time my mother didn’t move, and when I went to see her she gave me a faint smile with half her mouth, then she immediately lowered her eyes and stared at the carpet. In a short time she became very old and thin, a shrunken frame with clothes hanging loosely on it. To me it seemed as if the world had been turned upside down. The doctor came all the time, he would sit down next to her and ask her questions which she hardly answered in her voice that was still hoarse and thick but also now harsh and grating. The doctor was young but not particularly good-looking, he was just very kind and I fell in love with him, because I always fall in love with doctors, but it wasn’t anything important, he didn’t realize and it soon passed. My mother was committed to a hospital for nervous disorders. La Lina went back to her village in Sardinia. Piero got a job in Pisa in a refrigerator factory, a job which seemed to be much better than the one he had had in Florence, and so I had to empty my house and my mother’s too. Piero was busy with his new job, and he also had problems with one of his superiors whom he didn’t like, he was tired and in a bad mood and he told me to get on with it all by myself because he didn’t have time and besides I was twenty-five years old. And so I no longer had any protectors. My mother stayed in that hospital for three months. I went to be with her as much as I could and I waited for her to say a few words to me; but she didn’t say anything to me, she just gave me that faint smile with half her mouth every so often. One night she died, of a heart seizure. Piero had a furious row with his superior and was fired. We had only just settled in the new house in Pisa. Signora Annina, my mother-in-law, came to lend us a hand, but she did nothing except complain about the heat, the mosquitoes and the house. And we had very little money. Piero sat all day in our bedroom, smoking and staring at the window, and I looked at his big head with its blond curls that had become dark with sweat, and I would ask him what we should do now and he would raise his eyebrows and turn the corners of his mouth down. Certainly, I had no protectors any more. Then, that summer, I met Serena. Meeting her cheered me up. She was looking after children as an au pair with a Dutch family. When the Dutch family left she came to our house to look after our children. We became friends. She was no protection, on the contrary it was we who had to protect her, and comfort her when she cried. Serena often cries. She was hopeless with the children because she had no patience. In fact I stopped paying her almost at once. Anyway, she didn’t need money because her father was rich and he looked after her. Serena phoned her father and asked him to find a job for Piero. Her father found him one. And that’s how we left for Perugia, at the end ofthat summer. Piero immediately cheered up when he had a job. It has always been his dream to work in a legal office and he liked Doctor Corsi, his boss, a lot. He liked Perugia, he liked the office, he liked everything. Serena came to Perugia with us. Later on, when we bought Le Margherite, she took that room over the cinema in Pianura.

  I haven’t told you much new. You know many things about me, I’ve told you them a thousand times. But it was to tell you how I was and what happened to me when I was twenty-five.

  I will say goodbye after this extremely long letter, and go and prepare supper because if I wait for the Sicilian to do it I’ll be in a real mess.

  Egisto has written to me saying he wants to co
me here on Saturday with someone he likes, but I don’t want to see people at the moment. I feel depressed. Perhaps I’m sorry that you are going. I won’t say don’t go, or go only for a few days, but when you are there I shall miss you from time to time.

  Lucrezia

  LUCREZIA TO EGISTO

  Monte Fermo, 27th October

  Just a couple of lines to tell you not to bring the picture-restorer, or at least not to bring him this Saturday, because I’m worn out and I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to find myself face to face with someone I don’t know. Piero doesn’t want anyone to touch the still-life. One of his clients at the office told him it was enough to gently rub an onion over it a few times and the stains would disappear and the colours come up fresh again. He has been doing this for a few days and he is satisfied with the results.

  Lucrezia

  ALBINA TO GIUSEPPE

  Rome, 28th October

  Yesterday evening I phoned you when I got back from Monte Fermo, but you were out. I wanted you to ask me over for supper because my fridge was empty. So I phoned Egisto, he was in and came over straightaway; he had some more or less stale bread in his house and a tin of Campbell’s soup, and we made ourselves a little soup.

  I had two letters from Lucrezia, one for you and one for Egisto. I’ll put yours in your post box when I pass your house on the way to school, and I’ll add this note of mine, just a few words.

  Egisto and I, and all of us, think you are making a mistake in moving to America for good. We think you will be very unhappy there. Go there for a holiday and come back. It doesn’t matter if you have sold your flat, it doesn’t matter if you have sent off your trunks, because there’s a solution for everything.

  It seems terrible that you’re leaving Italy for good. It will be boring at Le Margherite without you. I shall certainly go there anyway, because I never have anything to do on Saturday and Sunday; if I go to see my family at Luco dei Marsi I’m ill for the whole week and if I stay in Rome I get depressed. So I shall go there anyway, but it won’t be the same without you.

  When I met you I fell in love with you, and now I want to tell you so. And I wrote you a lot of letters, but I tore them up. Then it was all over because I’m like Lucrezia in that way, I fall in love easily and then one day I wake up and it’s all over.

  I’ve never fallen in love with Egisto perhaps because he seems rather ugly to me - so squat and short and dumpy. Not that you are so good-looking to tell the truth, because you are dry and thin and sallow. Once or twice Egisto has asked me to go to bed with him, I said no, and he was hurt, because he’s very touchy; he disappeared for a few days then he came back again and everything was as before. Now we love each other like brother and sister. If I happen to go to bed with someone I tell him about it, but that doesn’t happen often, because I fall in love easily but bed is a problem for me.

  I don’t get on with my real brother. I don’t even get on with my mother and when I go home to Luco dei Marsi I have a terrible time. My father is the best, though he is old and deaf. Then there are my sisters Maura and Gina, one nine and the other ten. My brother works in a greengrocer’s. He studied to be a teacher but couldn’t find a job. It infuriates him that I have a job in Rome. He won’t leave it alone. When I go in the shop where he works he gets sulky and goes off in a corner. Then he tells my mother that everyone thinks there is something peculiar about me and that they ask if perhaps I haven’t finished up in the Red Brigade.

  My mother and brother say I go around dressed like a beggar. I answer that I have to send a good proportion of my salary to them. They answer that I could go to a Standa department store and that I needn’t spend much. They really hate my jeans and cheap shoes.

  And then at home I have to sleep with Maura and Gina. It’s really awful sleeping with Maura and Gina. All of us sleep in a big double bed with a red quilt. I’m too hot, they’re too cold, I push the quilt off, they haul it back again. They chatter away in the dark to each other nineteen to the dozen, they giggle and shriek with laughter. When I got the job in Rome and found my bedsit, I was particularly happy in the evenings when I got into my little bed by myself. I’ve no idea why people say being alone is so unpleasant. Being alone in Rome is lovely. It’s not so nice on Sundays if you are waiting for the phone to ring and it doesn’t. On the other days it’s lovely.

  I would be very happy to make a little trip to America too, but I don’t even have enough money to buy myself a new pair of shoes.

  You must have heard about the Women’s Centre. Yesterday we spent hours cleaning the floor. We were ready to drop afterwards. We went back to Le Margherite and Lucrezia shut herself in her room to write to you and told me to give Vito his supper. This was quite a job because Vito runs from one room to another and you have to follow him with the plate. Yesterday that Swiss girl they were expecting arrived. But she had taken the dogs for a walk. She says she adores dogs. Perhaps she prefers the. dogs to the children, and she’s quite right to because though Lucrezia’s children are very beautiful they’re quite impossible to put up with.

  Afterwards Piero took me into Pianura by car, just in time for me to catch the last train.

  I wanted to write you just a couple of words, and instead I have written you a proper, long letter.

  Ask me over to supper tonight. Ask Egisto over too. You have to spend a little money on these suppers you keep giving us, but these are the last days you will be with us.

  Albina

  EGISTO TO LUCREZIA

  Rome, 30th October

  Disagreeable. You really are disagreeable. You don’t want me to bring Ignazio Fegiz to see you, and I won’t bring him. So much the worse for you. You will miss the opportunity of meeting a really agreeable person.

  I’m sending you this letter by post. I’m not coming either. I’m going to Tarquinia with Ignazio Fegiz, to stay with some of his friends who have a beautiful house there.

  Look after your still-lives and your onions.

  Egisto

  EGISTO TO LUCREZIA

  Rome, 4th November

  I apologise. My letter was a bit curt. Piero phoned me and apologised. He said that these days you are depressed and irritable. Perhaps Giuseppe’s leaving has made you depressed. It’s made all of us depressed. I apologised too. Piero said I was to bring whoever I liked.

  I will come with Ignazio Fegiz next Saturday. We didn’t go to Tarquinia because his friends asked us to postpone the trip, their water system had broken down.

  Egisto

  GIUSEPPE TO LUCREZIA

  Rome, 5th November

  The Lanzaras came today. I told you, they are the people who are buying my house. They came to look at the house and furniture properly and to decide on how the rooms should be arranged. I called Roberta and she came up immediately. I wanted her to meet them, seeing that she says they have led me up the garden path. Also Roberta has a way of making me more at ease with people. She had some caviar and brought it along. I made tea and toasted some bread. I like the Lanzaras. He is a psychoanalyst. He is little and has a long pear-shaped head which is completely bald. She is a plump Spaniard with black hair. They don’t look like a couple of crooks. I would be very sorry if my home were to be lived in by a couple of crooks.

  Whilst we were having tea Egisto arrived with a friend of his whom he has talked about a lot to me. He is called Ignazio Fegiz. When he came in, in a raincoat covered in epaulettes and buttons and with a peaked cap on his head, it seemed as if a great gust of wind came in with him. He is a man of about forty, but his hair is completely grey as was apparent when he took off his cap. A thick grey crew-cut. He is tall, good-looking, florid, with strong white teeth. He always keeps one hand clenched behind his back, and he makes great gestures in the air with the other. He sat down and had tea and ate a considerable amount of toast and caviar. He was meeting the Lanzaras for the first time but he immediately started to question them about the flat and the arrangement of the rooms, disapproving of everything they had alre
ady decided. He began to wander about the flat, flinging all the doors open. He discovered that they had to get rid of a wall between the kitchen and the bathroom, and make a new bathroom where the little cards-room is. They ought to have what is now the sitting-room as the bedroom and the room at the end of the passage should be the consulting-room. Roberta didn’t agree. He got hold of a piece of paper and drew a plan of the flat as he saw it. Roberta drew a plan too. The Lanzaras stayed silent and seemed a little mystified. Egisto was curled up in a corner reading a book.

  Then the Lanzaras left and I suggested that we make a little supper. Roberta started to make a sauce for the spaghetti. But Ignazio Fegiz also had his own ideas about spaghetti sauce. It didn’t need butter and tomatoes, it needed oil, garlic and chillies. Egisto sided with him. I was neutral. Ignazio Fegiz won. I think he is one of those people who always wins.

  While we were eating Ignazio Fegiz talked about himself. He lives alone. He has a flat in via della Scrofa. He restores pictures and sometimes he sells pictures too. When he was young he would have liked to paint, but he soon realized that he did not have a vocation for it.

  He gives the impression of being an extrovert, expansive person who is generous with himself. But in fact I think he is a complicated, tormented person and that he has a whole lot of things inside himself that he never mentions. In that hand which he always keeps behind his back he has a bundle of things that he never shows to anyone. I said as much to him. I said that I would like to see what he had in that bundle. He burst out laughing and spread his hands out on the table. He laughed, but perhaps he wasn’t too pleased all the same.

  I feel I would like to stay here a little longer. But it is better that I leave thinking that my life here in Italy was a good one. In fact it seems good to me because I am leaving. Before I decided to leave I found it intolerable.