Among Women Only

by Cesare Pavese

  I said I'd have a cup of coffee but wouldn't stay. We weren't the right company for each other in such a place. "I might very well drop you," I said, "and go with that type wearing the big silk neckerchief."

  Febo looked at the boy in the foulard chattering at a table with two women with smeared lipstick. The boy raised an eyebrow, not answering, leaning back against the bar.

  "That boy," I said, "doesn't dream of coming to see you or me to spend an evening. He doesn't have this itch to move around. Elegance for him is the perfume he buys in the tobacco stores and red and green neckties. He works with those girls. Why amuse yourself at his expense?"

  Febo planted his elbows on the bar behind him and looked at the fellow. Not yet drunk, he grumbled: "Who's talking now? The woman or the colleague?"

  I called him a clown and said I was serious.

  Then, looking up, he asked me what sort of place I had been born in.

  "Like this, more or less," I said dryly.

  The young man with the foulard had discovered that Febo was staring at him and had begun to stare back. "And you," Febo said, still looking brassily around the room, "you got out of your environment, put on silk stockings, and now you amuse yourself at the expense of us respectable and educated people. Who asked you to?"

  As he spoke, he stared at the foulard, who had started to come over. I felt something brewing in the room and was blinded by anger, fear, and an instinct to stop the foulard. I slapped Febo in the face with everything I had, yelled something, and dragged him off by the arm. Everyone laughed and made way. We reached the car in a shower of laughter and insults from the door.

  I said: "Get going, you fool."

  Teeth clenched, he started the car and crossed over the Dora as if the bridge were collapsing under us. "I want to get out here," I said.

  His face was half resentful, half amused. "And I want to drink," he said. "Everybody treats me like a drunk. I might at least be one."

  My hands were still shaking and I kept quiet. I let him run on. But I seemed to have taken the slap myself and couldn't calm down. He's no worse than the others, I said to myself; in his circle they're all like that. I kept saying it over and over to myself and wondered if it was worth the effort to work and get where I had got and not be anything, be worse off than Momina, who at least lived among her own kind. Other times I had consoled myself by saying it wasn't what I had got but the act of getting it that made my life worthwhile. "This is a destiny like any other," I said, "and I made it myself." But my hands were trembling and I had trouble calming down.

  Finally I said dryly again that I wanted to get out. I opened the car door. Then Febo began kissing me wherever he could put his lips, moaning; then he stopped. I jumped out and went off.

  19

  It's not easy to avoid leisured people. When I got back to the hotel, I found an invitation to a de luxe auction, with a note initialed by Morelli saying he would phone me the next day. It began to sink in on me that if I had rented a room on arriving in Turin I would never have met Morelli or anyone. Except Febo, unfortunately. But that was the sort of life I was living—useless to lament the end of the calm disorder of my life in Rome. These things pass away by themselves. Many times in the past years I had found myself in a similar whirl. It was almost laughable: only Maurizio was left. And how long would he be left?

  For several days the work in Via Po discouraged me. I was needed there all the time. I had to run around, think of everything, explore every corner of the city. Twenty years before, I wouldn't have thought it possible. Since when had I been so clever? It was as though I also were putting on a play, like the leisured people of Turin, and after all it was only proper that I should have them underfoot when I was working for them. When I think like this, I'd like to be able to get away, drop everything, go back to the workshop.

  Even Becuccio had to have his say about the antique furniture. He knew a couple of cabinetmakers, father and son, who before the war had worked at the Royal Palace and had done some delicate restorations. We went to find them. They were at the back of a courtyard up a dirty, narrow alley, but inside it was an old palace; there were even some trees and a statue. The cabinetmaker, a little old man who touched his glasses suspiciously, began to chatter in the open yard. When he realized what we wanted, he said it was a shame to put beautiful furniture in a shop. Modern stuff, veneered and enameled, would do. I told him that we'd already hashed that out, that I wanted to see something. What did I want to see, he asked, since the palaces were all closed? I didn't want to see the palaces, I said, all I wanted was an idea, I wanted to orient myself. He said that if I didn't want to see, it was clear that I didn't understand anything about it, and in that case I might as well put the usual stuff in the shop.

  Becuccio asked if he didn't have some work underway. The old man turned to the open shop and shouted into the dark. Somebody moved in the back.

  "Do we have anything?" the old man shouted.

  The other grunted.

  "There isn't anything," said the old man, touching his glasses. "What do you expect? Nobody wants to work for people any more."

  Becuccio was irritated and began to lecture him, and I had to drag him away too. The cabinetmaker had retreated into his shop and wouldn't answer him. We returned together to Via Po, where Febo was waiting for me to choose the materials for the walls. I told Becuccio that it was nice to live like the old man and slam the door in people's faces and work only when you liked.

  "He can't have much work," Becuccio said. "Politics has gone to his head."

  Then I went to the auction with Morelli, and there were some beautiful pendulum clocks and sets of tableware. Every now and then a "this would do" escaped from me; but I remembered I was there only to pass the time and give Morelli an excuse for keeping me company.

  "Wouldn't you like to set up a house of your own?" Morelli asked.

  "Yes... if some day a certain Clelia gets one for me..."

  He enjoyed the role he played among those crystals, and the women who inspected me out of the corners of their eyes; some he said hello to. I thought how many of them must know Momina, Febo, Mariella, and the painters. Turin is pretty small.

  I asked Morelli if there were any really serious people in that upper crust. He asked: Serious about what? "If they have vices," I said, "if they gamble away their inheritances, if they are as lazy as they want to be. Up to now I've found only some people a little bespattered, or some kids..."

  "The fact is," Morelli said, "that we're younger than the kids. They're still nowhere."

  "I mean the old people like you and me, those with the time and means. Do they at least enjoy their vices? If I didn't have to work, I'd have terrible vices. At bottom I'm not at all satisfied with my life..."

  Morelli, serious, told me that one vice I did have: I had the vice of working, of never taking a vacation. "You're worse than the industrialist fathers of families," he said, "but they at least were men with mustaches and built Turin."

  "I don't have a family and I don't have mustaches yet," I said.

  Morelli looked around.

  "There is one who's really been serious," I said. "The Mola girl..."

  "You think so?" he said dubiously. Then he suddenly became irritated. "Working night and day for one's family ought to mean something. If I had a daughter who played such tricks on me, I'd have shut her in a convent long ago. Once they knew how to do such things."

  "I believe," I said, looking around, "that girls in convents always begin by making love together."

  "But gentlewomen came out"—Morelli warmed up—"ladies, real mistresses of the house. At least they knew how to talk."

  "Not that that's so bad," I went on. "A girl always falls in love with the one who's most on her toes. But here in Turin they don't even take these things seriously. They are sad and have a bellyache."

  "They talk..." Morelli said.

  And what were we doing? The only good moments I had in Turin were really the evenings when I dropped in
on a movie alone, or mornings over my coffee behind a window in Via Roma where nobody knew me and I sketched projects and imagined myself setting up some kind of shop. My real vice, which Morelli hadn't mentioned, was my pleasure in being alone. It's not young girls who are better off in convents, but ourselves. I thought of that grandmother of Mariella's who at eighty liked to see people and listen from her bed to other people's noise. I thought of Carlotta, who had led her own life. All in all, living is really putting up with someone else and going to bed with him, whether you feel like it or not. Having money means you can isolate yourself. But then why do leisured people with money always look for company and noise?

  When I was a girl, I envied people like Momina, Mariella, and the others. I envied them and didn't know what they were. I imagined them free, admired, mistresses of the world. Thinking it over now, I wouldn't exchange places with any of them. Their lives seemed foolish to me, all the more so because they didn't realize it themselves. But could they act otherwise? Would I have acted otherwise in their place? Rosetta Mola was naive, but she had taken things seriously. At bottom it was true she had no motive for wanting to kill herself, certainly not because of that stupid story of her first love for Momina, or some other mess. She wanted to be alone, to isolate herself from the uproar; and in her world you can't be alone or do anything alone unless you take yourself out of it completely. Now Momina and the others had already taken her up again: we all went together to pick her up at Montalto. Just remembering that day depressed me.

  20

  Rosetta returned, days later. This time too she stopped hesitatingly at the door. Becuccio saw her and said: "She's not looking for me."

  That morning we were taking photographs to send to Rome and Febo turned the lights in the niches on and off, rearranging the position of a statuette that served as a model. He joked with Rosetta and told her that at Ivrea he had been seduced and deserted by two bad women. Then he wanted to photograph the two of us in front of the windows to let them know in Rome what Turin women are like.

  "We need Mariella," I said.

  We ended by talking about the play and Rosetta said that now Nene was preparing the set. "That's all she knows how to do," Febo said.

  I asked Rosetta if she painted any more.

  "It was just for fun," she said. "You can't play all the time."

  "These Turin girls," Febo said, "know how to paint, act, play instruments, dance, knit. Some of them never leave off."

  Rosetta looked at me sadly. Her dress reminded me that there was sun outside, a beautiful March day.

  "Only the trades that hunger drives you to, you never drop," Rosetta said. "I'd like to have to earn my living knitting."

  Febo said that hunger wasn't enough to make you succeed: you had to know your trade the way starving people know hunger, and practice it like gentlemen.

  "Everybody who wants to doesn't die of hunger," Rosetta said, looking at us with those still eyes, "and the gentleman is not always the one with money."

  Becuccio stood there listening, and the photographer—black bow tie, like Loris—rubbed his hands.

  I said we must hurry. While they were shooting pictures I took Rosetta upstairs and down and showed her how the shop had turned out. She also liked the curtains and the other materials. We discussed the lighting. I was called to the phone.

  "I'm leaving," Rosetta said. "Thanks."

  "We'll see each other again," I said.

  In the evening I saw Momina with some other people—new people, possible future clients—and there was talk of an auto trip, of going to the Riviera some Sunday. "Let's tell Rosetta, too," Momina said.

  "Of course."

  Some days later, Mariella and Rosetta drove up to Via Po, and Mariella, blond and fresh, shouted from the driver's seat that I should take a ride with them. "I work mornings," I said.

  "Come and visit us," she said. "Grandmother wants to get to know you better."

  I waved to Rosetta and they left.

  The next day Rosetta appeared at the door, alone.

  "Come in," I said. "How are you?"

  We walked under the porticoes, talking, and stopped to look at the copper engravings and dark leather bindings in Bussola's window.

  "It might almost do for a living room the way it is," I said.

  "Do you like books?" Rosetta said, livening up. "Do you read much?"

  "During the war. One didn't know what to do. But now I don't manage at all. I always feel I'm putting my nose into somebody else's business..."

  Rosetta was amused and look hard at me.

  "... It seems indecent. Like opening other people's letters ..."

  Rosetta, however, had read a little of everything. She had gone to the university, she admitted with embarrassment, almost ashamed.

  "How was it that Momina studied in Switzerland?" I said.

  Momina was the daughter of nobles who had spent their last penny in bringing her up. Then she had married a Tuscan landowner, and it was nice that she had never let herself be called baroness. Anyhow, she no longer had the title. Rosetta knew Neri, her husband; she had been with Momina at Versailles the very summer that Neri was courting her. It had been a wonderful summer for Rosetta, too. She had enjoyed watching Momina torment Neri, like a mouse. Four years ago. Poor Neri, he was elegant and stupid.

  "Just what one needs," I observed.

  But after the marriage Neri had got his revenge. After all, his grandfather had only been a steward, one of those who go around on horseback, wearing riding boots. Neri had an excuse to stay in the country to look after his lands, and Momina had left him.

  "You, Rosetta, are you like Neri or like Momina?" I asked her.

  "How do you mean?"

  "Your father's a working man," I said. "Do you admire your father?"

  "I'm more like Momina," she said without hesitation, and smiled.

  So we went to the Riviera. The novelty of this trip was Nene's coming too. We took two cars, two magnificent Studebakers. I was seated between Nene and Rosetta, and some baron drove us, a young man, a donkey who didn't know the score but did know paintings. He drove all the time, half turned around to talk to Nene about plays and Frenchmen. Momina was up ahead in Mariella's car, which was full of people I had barely met. It was still dark and rain was threatening. But everyone swore the sun always shone on the Riviera on Sunday.

  Rosetta scarcely opened her mouth. Again I was amazed at Nene, sculptress or painter or whatever, thick-lipped and banged, and her shameless way of laughing like a baby. And yet she was thirty at least, only a little younger than I. She was also naive and impulsive, and when Rosetta asked how Loris was and why he didn't come too, she got confused and dropped her voice as if caught in the act. Strange girl—she seemed like a lizard. Probably she really was clever, and anyhow artists are what they are.

  But I was sleepy. We had spent the evening at the baron's house having dinner and waiting for the girls so we could leave. I drowsed off. We met a strong wind in the Apennines and the rain caught us on the road deep in the woods. Then, as the day slowly brightened, the rain thinned out, until we were running along the sea in warm air with the windows open, under the last showers. Here the gardens were green and already in flower. I asked Rosetta if she were going to the sea that year. She said no, she was going back to Montalto.

  Our destination was a villa above Noli, but someone said: "Let's go to San Remo."

  "As for me," the baron said, "I'd like a little nap."

  While they talked, we got out in the square at Noli. Momina came up. At that hour, in the early light, the square was deserted, the cafes closed.

  "We're early birds once again," Momina said to me.

  Rosetta, her bag hanging from her shoulder, had her back to the sea as she leaned on the railing, smoking.

  "I've never seen the sea at this hour," Nene said.

  "You never do unless you stay up all night," Momina said, "but it's not worth the trouble. This breeze with the smell of flowers is better than the s
ea."

  We set out again. The baron had won. We took the mountain road and, speeding between stone walls and around risky curves, we reached the villa, which was like a huge greenhouse among the magnolias.

  21

  As we walked in the garden, Rosetta told us that last year she had wanted to become a nun. We had gone off, she, Momina, and I, into a little stand of trees, up to a balustrade from which you looked out at the sea.

  "But they don't want girls like me," she said.

  "Why not? If you have the money?" Momina said.

  Rosetta began to laugh softly and said that the nuns had to be virgins.

  Momina said: "It's a marriage like any other. All one asks of a bride is that she be dressed in white."

  "It's beautiful up here," Rosetta said. "But tomorrow it won't be so nice. To keep some respect for the world and people, one should do without everything. A convent solves the problem."

  "And what would you have done, all alone like that? Painted Madonnas?" Momina asked. "I wouldn't know how to get through the days."

  Rosetta shrugged off Momina's allusion. I was hardly aware of it myself. But Mariella and the others were already approaching under the magnolias, and Momina murmured: "One day at a time is enough. Let's get through this one..."

  The weather was really promising, if only there hadn't been the women, sisters and friends of the baron, and their escorts, who insisted on making a fuss and wore out the tormented old caretakers opening the house, carrying stuff, putting the verandah in order. Momina took things in hand by suggesting that they assign us women a bedroom and let us rest for an hour.

  The villa was a splendor, full of heavy furniture and armchairs, but all sheeted, even the lamps. The wooden shelves were still covered in waxed paper. "It's like a medieval castle," Momina said, walking along a corridor. When the coming and going to the bathroom stopped, I sat in a wicker chair and Mariella combed her hair at a mirror, Momina took off her shoes and collapsed on the bed, Nene and Rosetta gossiped at the open window. It reminded me of those American movies about girls who lived together in one room with an older girl, quite experienced, who plays wet nurse to the others. And I thought how phony it all was: the actress who plays the ingenue is the most divorced and the best paid. I laughed to myself, and Momina, who was smoking, said: "I hope they send up a drink."