Voices In The Evening

by Natalia Ginzburg

  Then they had children. A boy was born and then a baby girl and then a boy again. In the meadow opposite the house nappies hung up to dry on a line fastened between two pear trees, and on the grass were toys and little pails to be seen. A country woman came from Soprano to look after the children, and she was provided with blue aprons. Catè was busy and had stopped crying. She did not go so often to Borgo Martino.

  But she did not like anyone in the village. She found Signora Cecilia tiresome, an old bergiana, a word they used in her home at Borgo Martino. It meant something like a chatterbox. There was a coolness between her and Gemmina; there always had been, from the time when she had married Vincenzino. Possibly Gemmina was jealous of her for her good looks; or perhaps she thought she had married Vincenzino for his money, without love.

  She did not take to Purillo. Xenia just seemed to her mad. She liked Nebbia well enough, especially because he came from Borgo Martino. But Pupazzina, Nebbia's wife, no, she did not care for her one little bit. She found her a bore, and thought she looked after her children badly. They were always rather dirty and never went out.

  She used to go occasionally with Raffaella, Vincenzino’s younger sister, to bathe in the stream. But she got bored with Raffaella, too. At eighteen Raffaella was more like a boisterous hobbledehoy. She let herself go playing with the children and she made them join in games that were too noisy and dangerous. She got them to dive into the whirlpools of the stream or climb up the highest rocks.

  Catè embarked on spending money, seeing that there was so much of it. She ordered clothes for herself in the town and also a cape of dark musquash She did not wear it often, because it seemed to give her ‘an air, as they used to say at home in Borgo Martino, like an old kangaroo’. This was a word which in their slang meant ‘a madame.’

  In imitation of Xenia she bought some tight trousers of black velvet. But Nebbia said they did not suit her, because they accentuated her hips.

  She took offence at that and told Vinoenzino that he could shut up, could Nebbia, and his wife, too, always dressed in ridiculous bits and pieces.

  She got grissini from Torre and sent Pinuccia to buy the strawberries at Castel Piccolo. Pinuccia would return, heated and sticky after coming up the path in the full sun, but without any strawberries, because they had already been all taken, early in the morning by those people at the Villa Rondine.

  Occasionally she went to La Casetta to see Signora Cecilia Cecilia showed her her hydrangeas, carnations and roses, and also a clump of moss-roses grown from seeds brought by Purillo from Holland.

  Sometimes she went to Le Pietre, Barba Tommaso would meet her at the garden gate, and kiss her hand, brushing it lightly with his old cheek so rosy and well shaved. This was because he liked it to be said that he was still rather a roué, and that at seventy he could still pay court to the ladies.

  Magna Maria was there, too, with her grey hair brushed back and her long red nose which had a wart on one nostril, the size of a pea, and she would offer, her some apricots and a glass of sweet wine; she would embrace her and then embrace her again and keep saying,

  'How are you? Are you well? Splendid, splendid! And the children? Splendid, splendid! And your mother? Splendid, splendid! But how splendid yon are!’

  She was not a bit amusing, all the same, that Magna Maria.

  She got into the habit of going to the mountains every Sunday with Nebbia, Purillo and Raffaella for rock-climbing in the summer and ski-ing in the winter.

  Raffaella behaved herself like a rowdy boy; she came down the slopes bawling like a wild thing and thumping everyone on the back with her hands heavy as lead. In the free air of the mountains she let herself go more than ever. She particularly delighted in playing tricks on Purillo, giving him soap when he asked for cheese, and cheese when he wanted soap. Or she put chestnut husks down his neck, which she had brought specially from the garden. Purillo patiendy disentangled these husks from his woolen pullover. They were harmless tricks, rather stupid, learnt at school.

  They all made fun of Purillo because he was such a Fascist, and they mimicked him receiving the Party officers at the works, and being lavish with the Roman salute.

  Purillo would smile, arching his little moudi, pushing Raffaella’s hand away as she gave him a punch in the stomach, heavy as lead.

  Towards evening they stopped off at the rest house to have some mulled wine and sing,

  Linda, Linda, my only true love,

  You’re cosy indoors, I’ve the heavens above!

  It was Nebbia’s song.

  But Nebbia was always in a hurry to get home if he was not to find Pupazzina in a huff. Catè used to chaff him then for being afraid of Pupazzina.

  They had left the car at Le Alpette, a little village on the road. It was always Nebbia’s car, because Purillo—he and his Isotta-Fraschini—kept his in swaddling-clothes.

  Catè used to find Vincenzino still sitting up, reading with his glass of whisky. She would try a little sip of it and make a grimace because she did not care about the strong flavour.

  ‘How goes it, darling?’ he said.

  And he went on reading. She went to undress and chose a nightdress from the chest of drawers. She had a great many nightdresses; she liked pretty fine ones of embroidered silk, of chiffon.

  ‘What a pretty nightdress!’ Vincenzino said, coming in to undress.

  She said,

  ‘When I was a little girl my mother made me wear nightdresses of flowered flannel with long sleeves, which I could not bear.’

  And she said as she was going to sleep,

  ‘He is not so bad, after all, Purillo.’

  For she was happy and felt full of tolerance and friendliness to everybody.

  Then she began to go to parties and dances. Sometimes Vinocenzino went with her; otherwise Purillo took her.

  In the village they began saying that she was Purillo’s lover. She knew that, because Pinuccia the maid reported it to her. She told Vincenzino, laughing.

  'l and Purillo!'

  But now when she came to La Casetta old Balotta looked at her sternly and found fault with everything she said.

  Her two sisters sometimes came to Borgo Martino to look for her. They were as young as ever. They would stay the night and romp with the children after supper. But she had an engagement for the evening and was dressing impatiently.

  Vincenzino would say to her,

  ‘Why don’t you take your sisters with you as well?’

  She would say as she was putting on her earrings,

  ‘No, they are too young. And anyhow they have not been asked.’

  The truth was she did not want to take them with her for fear that people would find them rather common.

  She said,

  ‘And they haven’t anything to wear either.’

  Vincenzino said

  ‘Tomorrow you can buy them some clothes.’

  Sometimes Nebbia came to spend the evening with them He left Pupazzina at home because Catè and she could not bear one another. Nebbia discussed things about the works with Vincenzino, and they two were in agreement against old Balotta, whose ideas were old-fashioned.

  She got bored and waited for the conversation to turn on something nice.

  She said,

  ‘How tiresome you are!'

  ‘Be quiet for a bit, dear,’ Nebbia would say to her.

  They used familiar terms to each other because they had been friends from childhood.

  ‘Life,’ she said one evening to Nebbia, ‘is really fine.’

  She had enjoyed herself very much in the afternoon at a tea given at the Villa Rondine. She had met a violinist, a friend of Xenia, who was staying at the time at the Villa Rondine; a little fellow whom everyone there called maestro except Xenia, who was more familiar with him.

  ‘Life,’ said Nebbia, ‘is fine for me and for Vincenzino because we have things to do But for you it must be an awful bore, because you do nothing all day long.’

  ‘I? I do nothing?
’ said she.

  ‘Well no. What do you do?’ said Nebbia.

  ‘And your wife? Your wife, what does she do?,' said she.

  ‘My wife,’ said Nebbia, ‘does not do anything either. You have the servants for the children and the house. You are bourgeoisie and get bored like every fine lady.’

  ‘l am not a fine lady lam not bourgeois! l do not know why, but I am not bourgeois, not even in my dreams.’

  Vincenzino began to laugh.

  ‘Anyhow,’ said she 'even if I am bourgeois, it is nothing to me. And I am not bored, because I enjoy myself. And even if I have a nursery maid, I am busy with the children, and take them out in any sort of weather. Pupazzina, on the other hand, never takes hers out for fear of their catching cold. Look how pale they are. And mine never have sore throats.’

  She had spoken rapidly and remained breathless. But Nebbia would not have anything said about his Pupazzina.

  He said, ‘Leave Pupazzina alone. What has she done to you?’

  ‘Nothing to me,’ she said and shrugged her shoulders.

  And then she said, I have been at the Villa Rondine today. They have now set up two big angels, of gilded wood, in the hall. They found them in an antique shop, in the town. They are not a bit pretty.

  ‘We shall have to move house,’ she said. ‘We are cramped here. We have not even got an ironing-room, and the ironing has to be done in the kitchen. At the Villa Rondine they have a large ironing-room, complete with fitted cupboards, and the linen well arranged. And now they have renovated the kitchen, with a marble floor; it is lovely.’

  ‘I am not even thinking of moving house,’ said Vincenzino. ‘I am quite all right here.’

  They had this argument about the house almost every evening.

  ‘Xenia,’ said she, ‘is not at all unlikeable. She is always very nice to me.’

  Meanwhile Nebbia, as not being interested in these discussions, had fallen asleep, with his head on the back of the arm-chair, and was smiling faintly in his sleep.

  ‘Why does he come here, if he goes to sleep?' said Catè. ‘He has become awfully boring, has Nebbia. He is a perfect fool.’

  After Nebbia had gone away they began to get ready for bed; meanwhile Vincenzino was still wandering round the rooms, and would pick up a book and plunge his nose in it.

  She was thinking about that violinist whom she had met at Xenia’s; and of how he had remained sitting by her side on a stool, and had told her that she had such an interesting head and resembled Botticelli's Primavera.

  His name was Giorgio Tebaldi. He was a very little man with grey hair, and a rather sing-song voice, just slightly so.

  He was so small that he did not come up to her shoulder, and already entirely grey, and not at all young, he could not be.

  She did not care about him; and yet had been content to stay there for an eternity, in the drawing-room at the Villa Rondine, listening to that gentle singing voice which soothed her.

  That voice seemed to stir plaintively within her if she thought about it again; a kind of plaintive sound which annoyed her, and yet stirred her.

  ‘How lovely it is, how lovely to be alive! and how dangerous! It is really dangerous, but so lovely.’ Those were her thoughts.

  ‘I am not bourgeois at all,’ she said to Vincenzino, who had undressed beside her. ‘Nebbia understands nothing. His wife, yes; she is a true bourgeois. But I, no.’

  ‘No, darling,’ said Vincenzino.

  And they fell asleep.

  The next day Xenia sent to invite her tip to the Villa Rondine again. They were in the garden Xenia and the violinist, drinking grapefruit juice in green glasses.

  Because of Xenia it was necessary to speak French. Catè got on badly in French and was ashamed of it.

  Then they went into the drawing-room and Xenia sat down to the piano. He put a handkerchief on his shoulder, set his chin on the violin, tightened the muscles of his face and played Sibelius's Valse Triste. Xenia accompanied him at the piano with a dreamy ironic look in her large eyes, so heavily shadowed, and hummed the music with closed lips.

  Then the three of them went for a stroll in the shrubbery, with the little dogs ahead of them.

  The day after, he came for her and the two of them went alone to the town to the antique dealer, because she had said that she liked those gilded angels, and would like similar ones.

  But it was not true that she liked them, and she had only said so to be polite to Xenia, and because she was feeling happy.

  The dealer had not got any more of those angels, but there was instead a Moor’s head, and he told her that it was very fine.

  She bought it.

  The dealer undertook to send it to her. Then they went on to a café. The café was very dark and deserted, and they sat down in a corner right at the back. He gazed at her. She did not know what to say and was twisting her scarf in her hands.

  She felt she was snared under his gaze as though in the meshes of a net. She was uneasy and had a great desire to run away and at the same time to remain there.

  He said with that caressing voice.

  ‘It is lovely for me to have met you dear.’

  She said in a stupid way,

  ‘You simply must not be so familiar.’

  Immediately she felt ashamed of having spoken so. She looked at the clock and said it was time for the motor-bus and she must be going.

  As the bus was full, only she was able to sit down and he remained standing near the ticket-desk.

  She watched him being some way from him. So small with his grey hair, a light soft hat too big for him, a hand in his pocket, and an absorbed rather sad look.

  Then she thought that all men if one observed them rather closely had that air of being unprotected solitary and absorbed and that troubled a woman: and she thought that that was very dangerous.

  She asked him to come in for a moment and have some tea.

  Vincenzino came in while they were having tea in the sitting-room. As always happened when someone was introduced to him, Vincenzino threw back his shoulders, and had that sharp look of his, like a cold flash of light.

  He sat down and talked about music, gazing into space: a long interminable murmur. After a little while Giorgio Tebaldi went away.

  She went to her room, and threw herself on the bed; she had a great impulse to laugh and at the same time was frightened.

  ‘How small he is, how small! Tiny!' she said and laughed all by herself. ‘And he is not a bit good-looking, he is ugly. Vincenzino is better and even Nebbia and Purillo.'

  She could see him as he put the handkerchief on his shoulder, rested his chin on his violin and tightened the muscles of his face: and now she did not know why, but he worried her with that violin and the handkerchief.

  Just once she had called him maestro and had felt very ridiculous, because she was not used to addressing people so.

  The next day the Moor’s head arrived: and she put it in the sitting-room on a bookcase. Vincenzino found it very ugly; and Nebbia thought it horrible. But Vincenzino told her to keep it there all the same in the sitting-room, if she liked it.

  He did not care a bit about ornaments and decorations.

  The next day Giorgio Tebaldi again called for her, and they went for a walk in the country.

  So, they became lovers.

  It lasted for a few days; and then he went away. He sent her two postcards, one from Verona, and one from Florence, just with his signature only He had asked her if she could write to him sometimes, to a poste-restante: but she had said no.

  ‘It has been nothing, nothing,’ she reflected. ‘It happens to so many women, to so many it happens, it is nothing, no one has known of it, and I must go on as if it had never happened.’

  But she was sick of the Moor’s head, and put it in the shoe-cupboard. Moreover, she found it rather distasteful to go back to the Villa Rondine. However, she went back there sometimes, because now Xenia often gave tea parties and at-homes. It seemed to her that there wa
s a vaguely ironic smile in her heavy weary eyes, as she handed some fruit juice in a green glass, just as on that day a while ago.

  One evening while they were coming home from the Villa Rondine she said to Vincenzino,

  ‘You know, I was a bit in love with that violinist.’

  ‘What violinist?’ he said.

  ‘Giorgio Tebaldi.’

  After a long silence he asked,

  ‘Did you make love?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No.’

  But her heart was as heavy as stone, for having lied.

  At times she began to cry when she was alone, and said

  ‘Oh, why am I so unfortunate?’

  And she said, ‘If Vincenzino was not so strange, if he would talk to me, if only he were different! If he were different, more like other people! Then I should be a different woman, much better!'

  After that she began to make love with those who came her way; she even made love with Purillo. With Nebbia, no, she never made love with him, because it never entered her head to do so with Nebbia; he was tied to Pupazzina.

  Vincenzino knew everything, and she saw well enough that he knew everything; she hated him, because he knew, and nevertheless continued to be the same as ever, to go for walks by himself, to drink whisky, to write up plans for the works, and to read books, plunging his nose into them.

  5

  Vincenzino and Catè

  AFTER the war Vincenzino and Catè separated.

  The children were in Rome, at school.

  Through the whole period of the war Catè and Xenia with their children had been at Sorrento. Sorrento had been Xenia’s idea a happy idea because, in fact, the fighting ad not pass that way.

  Later Catè and Xenia quarrelled, over a matter of linen. But it was an excuse, as their relations had deteriorated for some time through inscrutable reasons.

  Catè went away from Sorrento and took a house in Rome in the Viale Parioli.

  Mario returned from being a prisoner in Germany with his lungs in a bad state and with some internal trouble. He and Xenia went back to the Vila Rondine Xenia had a homoeopathic doctor brought from Switzerland, and installed him permanently in the house to look after Mario.