The City and the House

by Natalia Ginzburg

  I don’t know if they feel any affection for me. Perhaps they do, seeing that they came to Follonica where I was staying. But perhaps that was just lack of imagination. I don’t know if I feel any affection for them. They intrigue me, and then as you know I’m alone a lot. We don’t have anything to talk about. If we talked about the big subjects - politics or whatever -I don’t think we would agree about anything. At Follonica I tried to find neutral, inoffensive subjects. The tent. The baby. The film. That film they say they are making. But they let every subject drop. Occasionally violent arguments broke out between them. They were ridiculous arguments about a tent-peg or a camping-stool, but they yelled like wild animals and seemed on the point of tearing each other limb from limb. I don’t know if they take drugs. I suspect it, but I’m not sure. They smoke joints. I’ve smoked them occasionally when I’ve been with them, out of politeness and not to seem old-fashioned but I prefer Marlboros. They had bought a plastic basin in the country which they used to fill with sea-water; they’d let it warm up in the sun and then bath the baby. But that baby is very tiny, she’s only three months old, and I was always afraid that they would harm her with all the heat and the sea-water and the feeding bottles of orange juice which they left for ages in the sun and let them get filthy in the sand and then stuck in her mouth. Nadia is one of those people who is terrified of everything, for herself; a wasp stung her and Alberico had to rush off and find some ammonia. Alberico was cursing but he quickly came back with ammonia, cotton wool and little packets of sterile gauze. For the baby on the other hand Nadia never fears anything. It never occurs to her that anything could hurt the baby. Her milk has dried up and she gives her baby-food which she buys, mixtures of flour and goodness knows what else; she goes into a bar and asks for a little hot water, tips the lot into a bottle and she’s away. Then Alberico washes the bottle at a public fountain. She doesn’t remember to and she’d be quite happy to use it still filthy.

  Anais intrigues me the most of all. She is not beautiful but I find her quite pretty. She and I have made love three times. Once in the bathroom of the pensione, where I had my bed. Once behind some bushes. Once here in Rome in my house, about an hour ago. She is going back to America in two weeks time. That doesn’t mean much to me. In fact it means virtually nothing to me. I haven’t been able to find out much about her. She speaks Italian badly and I speak English badly. She has an eight-year-old son in America. Her mother looks after him. The boy’s father was a Pakistani. She is a millionaire. She didn’t tell me that, the others told me.

  We came back to Rome two days ago. Anais is sleeping at the other side of my room. She says that no one bothers her when she is here in my flat, but down below there’s all hell going on - the baby crying, and yelling about one thing and another. Yesterday Salvatore slapped Nadia and made her nose bleed. I think she’d called him a fucking queen, or something like that. I arrived when it had already happened. Nadia was lying on the bed with a wad of something to stop the bleeding, Salvatore was cooking a chicken stew, Alberico was typing. When Alberico saw me come in he looked pleased. He made me a coffee and told me about his film. He had already told me a little about it during the journey from Follonica to Rome. He and Anais travelled in my car. To be more comfortable, they said, and also to keep me company. I thought that was kind of them. The film is extremely complicated and full of corpses.

  Come away from Luco soon, come back to Rome. I’ll take you out to dinner. You’ll meet Anais.

  Egisto

  ROBERTA TO GIUSEPPE

  Rome, 22nd September

  Dear Giuseppe,

  We haven’t written to each other for a while now. For months we’ve just talked over the phone and that’s been it. But when you’re making international telephone calls you think about the money you’re spending and so you finish up not saying anything.

  So many more things can be said in a letter.

  As I told you on the phone, Alberico has agreed to undergo psychoanalysis, after I had strenuously insisted that he should. He comes and sees Doctor Lanzara four times a week, at two in the afternoon. He started on the 10th September. He’s been punctual so far. I asked Lanzara if the fact that his consulting room is in what was once your flat might disturb Alberico and remind him too much of you. Lanzara thought about it for a while but then he said it wasn’t important. Besides the flat is completely different now, it seems virtually unrecognizable.

  After each session Alberico comes down to my flat and has a coffee. In this way I see him often, which pleases me. He seems fairly well to me. As ever he’s very thin and pale, and has that shuffling way of walking; he wears sandals and his feet are always filthy. He always seems like somebody who has just walked for miles and miles. Though in reality he’s just caught the bus in Piazza Sonnino and got out a few yards away from here.

  He’s working, he says. He’s writing the screen-play for a film. He told me the story. I didn’t understand any of it.

  The film’s title is Deviance.

  I always ask him what he’s eaten, because he looks undernourished. However it seems that they eat an incredible amount at his house. They do nothing but cook. Fish, peppers.

  The baby has been weaned and is growing well. That’s what he told me. I haven’t been to their place for a while. I don’t want to bother them. I belong to a different generation.

  You will have heard that Piero and Lucrezia are separating. What a pity. I’m very sorry; I remember them together and I can’t imagine them apart. She is trying to find a flat in Rome, with the money she inherited from her mother. She has seen a great many but she doesn’t like any of them. She has asked me to help her. You know I have a friend who runs an estate agency. Lucrezia wants to have a house in old Rome. But she has very little money. It’s not an easy matter by any means.

  They are going to sell Le Margherite. What a pity. With the money they get from the sale he will buy an apartment in Perugia and the rest will go to her.

  How quickly everything is happening. It seems only yesterday that you and I went to Le Margherite, that I saw Le Margherite in front of me - the porch, the swing, all those children and all those dogs, and that entrance hall where there was a coat-stand that was always overloaded.

  I feel sorry for Piero. People tell me he’s a broken man. Egisto told me - I met him in a café with a girl who had red hair, an American who was staying with Alberico and the others. Lucrezia is taking all the children with her. She’s become Ignazio Fegiz’s lover. They’re going to live together.

  It’s unbelievable how quickly everything happens. Goodness only knows what they’re going to do with all those dogs. I love dogs and I can’t not think about them. It’s true though that the main worry is all those children being moved into a flat in the city, and with another father.

  I remember that day when Ignazio Fegiz came to your place and then we all came down to mine and made spaghetti. Then I remember that time he took us to Florence in his car. I didn’t like him. He was always telling me I was wrong. He’s one of those people who always tells everyone they’re wrong.

  That time we went to Florence was shortly before you left for America. I remember that trip to Florence very well. I remember the last weeks before you left very well. You were very restless. You looked bewildered, wandering about the house, in the midst of all that chaos. Once or twice your brother phoned. He wanted to be sure that you were coming. I can still hear his voice in my ears, curt, deep, authoritative. I congratulated him on his marriage. Goodness, how quickly everything happens.

  I didn’t really understand what kind of woman Anne Marie is. She was very kind to me, for the few days I was a guest in her house.

  I really know nothing about you now. You say so little on the phone.

  With love from

  Roberta

  LUCREZIA TO GIUSEPPE

  Rome, 10th October

  Dear Giuseppe,

  I’ve been in Rome for a week. I’m here in Roberta’s house as she has kindly put me u
p. I must buy a flat but flats are so dear and I haven’t much money. I have the money I inherited from my mother but it’s not enough. I’ve seen some flats but they were small and ugly. LF. is in Paris and he’ll come back around the middle of the month. Besides I’ve realized that he isn’t going to help me find a flat and that I have to look at them myself. I’ve enrolled the children in schools here. The two eldest will go to the Tasso school, the two little ones to the German school in via Saleria. I have to find a nursery for Vito. I do nothing but go round and round Rome like a spinning top and I’m worn out.

  I’ve just heard from a friend of Serena that she has a flat she could lend me for a year. She’s an Australian and she’s going back to Australia for a year. The flat is in Piazza del Paradiso. It’s a bit dark and there’s no central-heating. But there are some electric heaters.

  What you said to me about treating my children as if they were furniture or luggage was wicked and unjust. You tell me what else I could do. I’m doing what other women do when they get separated. The children have to stay with me, and I have to stay with LF. in Rome. We are trying to sell Le Margherite. Piero has already found a little apartment in Perugia, near his office, and he will live there with his mother.

  I can’t sleep and at night I keep twisting and turning in bed, I put the light on then put it off, light up a cigarette then put it out, push all the pillows and blankets off the bed. My eyes seem to be full of pins. I’m not well. Roberta is very good to me. She is a great help to me. I talk a lot, I do nothing but talk.

  The flat that was yours before is above my head. The Lanzaras live there. We went there for tea once. Your flat has been so changed that you wouldn’t recognize it. What used to be the sitting-room is now a bedroom with chenille bedspreads in it. That’s where I broke the ashtrays, remember?

  My life has reached a turning point. This is why I can’t sleep. I’m a bit annoyed with I.F. because he took it into his head to go off to Paris at such an important moment for us. And just when we have to look for a flat.

  One thing about him has astonished me. He hasn’t said that he would give me the money to buy a house, seeing that the money I have isn’t enough. If he had offered it to me I’d have refused. But to tell you the truth I expected him to offer it to me, but he hasn’t done so. And he’s rich too. I think he’s rich. But he and I never talk about money.

  He doesn’t want to leave his house in via della Scrofa. He pays according to the fair rent laws, and it’s convenient. It’s too small for us all to stay there, it’s virtually just one room. Besides, he hasn’t offered.

  I’ll have some money when we’ve sold Le Margherite. But I shall have to put some aside for living expenses. Piero will give whatever’s necessary to support the children.

  I think I’m pregnant. I get morning sickness. I don’t want an abortion. I shall have a sixth child. It is I.F.’s. But I.F. is in Paris and doesn’t know about it yet.

  I want this sixth child. You know how much I like being pregnant. And I wanted to have a child with I.F. I told him I wanted to have a child with him. He didn’t say anything. Sometimes he becomes extraordinarily silent, and I think he’ll never talk to me again.

  Serena has got back from Russia. She is in Pianura. On Saturday I shall go over and start emptying the place, room by room. Serena will help me. I get dizzy just thinking about it. Le Margherite is a big house, and full of things. I loved it so much once. Now I hate it.

  I can’t bear the country any more. I want a city around me: Rome.

  We’ve already got a buyer for Le Margherite. He has offered two hundred million. Piero says it’s not enough. He wants two hundred and fifty. They’re discussing it.

  My mother-in-law’s at Le Margherite and she spends every day crying. When I go there she follows me from room to room and cries. She asks me if I won’t reconsider, out of love for the children. I try to be kind to her, but I can’t bear her.

  The children are still at my sister-in-law’s, in Forte die Marmi. They have missed more than a month of school. Never mind.

  Piero and I now only talk about practical things. About possessions and money. How to divide the furniture, the crockery and the silver. Sometimes Piero also talks about me, He does this particularly when he phones. He starts out in a cold, calm tone and then little by little his voice gets thick and harsh. Then I ask him however he managed to live with me all this time, if he sees me as such a hypocrite and so faithless.

  You’ve no idea how many things there are in a house. Too many. It seems impossible to have bought so much. It seems impossible to have bought all those things, and with such pleasure too. At the moment when I have to choose whether to leave things or take them with me I hate them all.

  I met your son on the landing the other day. He recognized me and offered me his cold hand. He was going to the Lanzaras’. He’s being psychoanalysed. Roberta says I should be psychoanalysed too because I’m at a difficult moment in my life. Perhaps she’s right.

  What a small world - your son is being psychoanalysed in the very flat you once owned.

  Yours

  Lucrezia

  ROBERTA TO GIUSEPPE

  Rome, 10th October

  Dear Giuseppe,

  Lucrezia gave me her letter to you to post. I’ll add a few words of my own. Poor Lucrezia. She says she’s happy, but to me she seems tired and lost. She’s very pale. But then she’s always pale. She says that she might be pregnant. I’d be desperate and would have an abortion immediately.

  Piero phones in the evenings from Monte Fermo. These phone calls last for hours. Goodness knows how much that poor devil spends on long-distance calls. Luckily it’s always him who calls, not Lucrezia, otherwise goodness knows how much I’d be spending.

  I.F. phones too, but not so often, and not at such great length. He’s phoned maybe three times since Lucrezia’s been here.

  I’m helping her to find a flat; we have seen a great many but she doesn’t like any of them. Now she’s going to stay in an apartment someone is lending her - it’s not bad, a bit dark.

  I feel sorry for the children.

  With love from

  Roberta

  GIUSEPPE TO LUCREZIA

  Princeton, 20th October

  Dear Lucrezia,

  I’m sending this letter to Monte Fermo. I imagine you are there now, packing everything up.

  You wrote to me that your life has reached a turning point. My life has also reached a turning point. I’m getting married. I’m marrying Anne Marie, my brother’s widow.

  I wanted to let you know immediately. I wanted you to be one of the first people to know.

  With love from

  Giuseppe

  ALBERICO TO GIUSEPPE

  Rome, 10th November

  Respected father,

  I heard from Roberta that you have got married. I’m pleased. I know you’ve phoned to tell everyone - Roberta, and even Egisto. You didn’t phone me though. I found that strange.

  I am well. The baby is growing well. My life is pretty uneventful. They’ve accepted the screenplay for my film and I’ve been paid for it. I shall direct it. I think the film will be dreadful. But I enjoyed myself well enough thinking it up, and I think I’ll enjoy myself making it.

  In via Nazario Sauro a few days ago I met that friend of yours on the stairs, the woman who has the house in the country and all those children. I thought she’d become ugly and worn out; her eyes had dark circles round them. I think she’s called Ophelia, or something like that.

  Alberico

  GIUSEPPE TO ALBERICO

  Princeton, 18th November

  Dear son,

  I phoned you but you weren’t at home. A woman’s voice answered. She talked half in English and half in Italian. Clearly she forgot to tell you. I’m sending you a little photograph of Anne Marie and me together in our garden. Mrs Mortimer, our next-door neighbour, took it.

  Anne Marie is a very intelligent woman. She works in an Institute for Scientific Research. That
is, she works on something I understand nothing whatsoever about. And I’m working on something she understands nothing whatsoever about. I’m writing a novel in Italian, a language she doesn’t know.

  Our days are spent in two separate worlds that have nothing to do with each other. We meet in the evenings, in the kitchen, and each of us says something about what we’ve done during the day, but very little for fear of boring the other. In living with someone else boredom is the worst risk.

  Boredom appears when each person knows everything about the other, or thinks he knows everything about the other, and no longer gives a damn about it. But no, I’m wrong. No one knows why boredom appears.

  My brother’s and Anne Marie’s marriage was based on interests held in common. Ours is based on the distance between my world and hers.