The Beautiful Summer

by Cesare Pavese

  Cesare Pavese

  * * *

  THE BEAUTIFUL SUMMER

  With an introduction by Elizabeth Strout

  Contents

  Introduction

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

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  Introduction

  Cesare Pavese was born in 1908 in a rural part of northern Italy called Santo Stefano Belbo. His family returned from this home to Turin every autumn, and all his life Pavese would be torn between country and city life.

  He began his writing career as a poet, eventually publishing his collection Work Wearies in 1936 (also known as Hard Work). But Pavese had always been interested in translating, and in particular, he developed a passion for the American literary voice. His first book of translation was Sinclair Lewis’s Mrs. Wreyn in 1931, and he went on to translate many more American writers, including Moby Dick, and also the work of Sherwood Anderson and John Dos Passos. His belief was that Americans were writing in a new language, using the vernacular of their lives, ‘a new texture of English … a style no longer dialect but language, reworked in the mind, recreated,’ and that the contemporary Italian language of that time, he felt, was stuck in an expression that no longer could make space for all that was happening in its country.

  What was happening in the country was, most notably, fascism. Pavese lived during the rise of Mussolini, and all his work is, in some way, informed by this. In 1935 he was arrested for having letters of an anti-fascist friend, and he spent a year isolated in confinement in Brancaleone Calabro, in southern Italy. Later, during the war, he was excused from going into the armed services because of asthma. But it is important to think of Pavese – to think of any writer – writing during his time and place in history, and Pavese’s time was during the rise of fascism and his place was, of course, Italy, both rural and city.

  Before his arrest he had become a major part of the Einaudi publishing house, which opened in 1933. He had first collaborated with its director, Giulio Einaudi, both as a creator of, and a contributer to, the magazine La Cultura, and Einaudi welcomed Pavese as a member of its house in 1937. They would remain his publisher and lifelong supporters, and he would work there as an editor and then editorial director for the rest of his life.

  During the spring of 1940 Pavese wrote The Beautiful Summer, the book you have in your hand, leaving it in manuscript form until he had completed two more short novels, The Devil in the Hills and Among Women Only. These he published together under the title of The Beautiful Summer in 1949. In June of 1950 he received the most prestigious prize in Italy, the Strega, for this book. In August, two months later, he died by suicide, taking an overdose of sleeping pills in a rented hotel room.

  About The Beautiful Summer, Pavese wrote in a letter to his former teacher that it was ‘the story of a virginity that defends itself.’ The narrative of this book is an astonishing display of a dense, almost frenzied writing – there are whispers here of the future work of Elena Ferrante – and yet the style holds always a gentle graciousness as well. This combination makes it an inimitable read; it has a style entirely its own. The story is essentially that of a young woman’s fall from innocence, and while one might rightly say this story is as old as all storytelling, the manner in which this book is written makes it a completely different version of such a theme. It takes place in Turin, during a time when the city had a bohemian artistic community, and it is this community which Pavese uncovers for us.

  The novel tells of Ginia, a young shop girl living with her brother, who falls in love with a painter over the course of a summer of freedom. There are three other women protagonists, although Ginia takes center stage. But the woman who leads her into these artists’ quarters is an older woman, Amelia, who is experienced in the ways of the world. The dichotomy of these two women sets up a splendid device in the construction of the book: Ginia’s innocence and Amelia’s experience. Throughout this narrative, the reader is taken through the most deeply believable aspects of Ginia’s loss of innocence. There is a generosity towards her that we see and we believe: Pavese is just stating the facts, and yet the facts are presented with an underlying charitableness to Ginia.

  In his real life, Pavese had trouble with women; he felt the betrayal of them deeply. In this book, he uses those feelings and gives us the portrait of an innocent, on the verge of discovering the cruelties of love.

  Elizabeth Strout

  ONE

  Life was a perpetual holiday in those days. We had only to leave the house and step across the street and we became quite mad. Everything was so wonderful, especially at night when on our way back, dead tired, we still longed for something to happen, for a fire to break out, for a baby to be born in the house or at least for a sudden coming of dawn that would bring all the people out into the streets, and we might walk on and on as far as the meadows and beyond the hills. ‘You are young and healthy’, they said, ‘Just girls without a care in the world, why should you have!’ Yet there was one of them, Tina it was, who had come out of hospital lame and did not get enough to eat at home. But even she could laugh at nothing, and one afternoon, as she limped along behind the others, she had stopped and begun to cry simply because going to sleep seemed silly and robbed you of time when you might be enjoying yourself.

  Whenever Ginia was taken by a fit of that kind she would unobtrusively see one or other of her girl friends home and chatter on and on until she had nothing more left to say. So when they came to say goodbye, they had really been alone for some time and Ginia would go back home quite calmed down without missing her companion too badly. Saturday evenings were of course particularly wonderful when they went dancing and next morning she could lie in. But it did not take that to satisfy her and some mornings Ginia would leave the house on her way to work just enjoying the walk. The other girls would say, ‘If I get back late, I find I’m sleepy next day’, or ‘If I get back late, they give me a beating’. But Ginia was never tired and her brother who was a night-worker, slept in the day-time and only saw her at supper. In the middle of the day – Severino turned over in bed when she came in – Ginia laid the table. She was always desperately hungry and chewed slowly, at the same time listening to all the household noises. As is usually the case in empty lodgings, there was no sense of urgency, and Ginia had time to wash up the dishes that waited for her in the sink, do a bit of tidying round, then lie down on the sofa under the window and let herself drowse off to the tick of the alarm-clock in the next room. Sometimes she would close the shutters so as to darken the room and feel more cut off. At three o’clock Rosa would go downstairs, pausing to scratch gently at her door so as not to disturb Severino until Ginia let her know she was awake. Then they would set off together, parting company at the tram.

  The only things Ginia and Rosa had in common were that short stretch of street and the star of small pearls in their hair. But once when they were walking past a shop-window Rosa said, ‘We look like sisters’, and Ginia saw that the star looked cheap and realized that she ought to wear a hat if she didn’t want to be taken for a factory-girl; especially as Rosa who was still under her parents’ thumb wouldn’t be able to afford one for heaven knows how long.

  On her way down to call her, Rosa came in unless it was getting too late, and Ginia let her help her tidy round, laughing silently at Severino who, like all men, had no idea what house-keeping involve
d. Rosa referred to him as ‘Your husband’, to keep up the joke, but quite often Ginia’s face would darken and she complained that having all the bother of a house without the husband to go with it was no fun. In point of fact she was not serious, for her pleasure lay precisely in running a house on her own just like a housewife, but she felt she must remind Rosa from time to time that they were no longer babes. Rosa, however, seemed incapable of behaving in a dignified manner even in the street; she pulled faces, laughed and turned round. Ginia could have smacked her. Yet when they went off to a dance together, Rosa was indispensable; with her easy, familiar ways and her high spirits, she made Ginia’s superiority plain to the rest of the company. In that wonderful year when they began living on their own account, Ginia had soon realized that what made her different from the others was having the house to herself – Severino didn’t count – and being able to live like a lady at her present age of sixteen. She let Rosa go around with her for the same reason that she wore the star in her hair, simply because it amused her. No one else in the district could be as crazy as Rosa when she wanted. She could pull everybody’s leg, laughing and tossing her head back, and some evenings she did nothing but fool the whole time. And she could be as awkward as an old hen. ‘What’s up, Rosa?’ someone remarked while they were waiting for the orchestra to start up. ‘I’m scared’ – and her eyes started out of her head – ‘behind there I saw an old man staring at me and waiting for me outside, I’m scared’. Her partner was not convinced, ‘He must be your grandfather, then!’ ‘Silly fool!’ ‘Let’s dance, come on!’ ‘No, I tell you, I’m frightened!’ Half-way round, Ginia heard Rosa’s partner shout, ‘You’re an ignorant little fool; run away and play. Go back to the factory!’ Then Rosa laughed and made everybody else laugh but as Ginia went on dancing she thought that the factory was just the sort of place for a girl like her. You had only to look at the mechanics who picked up acquaintance with them by fooling around in a similar manner.

  If there was one of these around you could be quite sure that before the evening was out one of the girls would get mad or, if she was more hysterical, start weeping. They teased you just like Rosa. They were always trying to get you to go down to the meadows; it was no use talking to them, all of a sudden you had to be on the defensive. But they had their good points: some evenings they would sing and they could sing well, especially if Ferruccio came along with his guitar. He was a tall blond fellow always out of a job but his fingers were still black and rough from handling coal. It did not seem possible that those large hands could be so skilful and Ginia, who had once felt them under her armpits when they were all on their way back from the hills, carefully avoided looking at them while he was playing. Rosa told her that this Ferruccio had enquired about her on two or three occasions and Ginia had replied, ‘Tell him to go and clean his nails first’. The next time she was hoping he would laugh at her but he had not even looked her way.

  But a day came when Ginia emerged from the dressmaker’s shop adjusting her hat, and found Rosa of all people in the doorway, who rushed up to her. ‘What on earth’s the matter?’ ‘I’ve run away from the factory!’ They walked along the pavement together as far as the tram and Rosa did not bring the matter up again. Ginia felt irritated and did not know what to say. It was only when they got off the tram near the house that Rosa mumbled that she was afraid she was pregnant. Ginia said she was a little fool and they started arguing at the street-corner. Then it all passed off because Rosa had only frightened herself into thinking it. But Ginia in the meantime had got into much more of a state than her friend, feeling she had been cheated and left out of it as if she was a child while the rest of them had a good time, particularly by Rosa, who did not possess the least pride. ‘I’m worth two of her’, reflected Ginia, ‘sixteen’s too soon. So much the worse for her if she wants to chuck herself away’. Although she spoke like this, she was unable to think about it without feeling humiliated. She could not get over the idea that the others had gone down to the meadows without a word to her about it while she, who lived on her own, still felt thrilled at the touch of a man’s hand. ‘But why did you come and tell me about it that day?’ she asked Rosa one afternoon when they were out together. ‘And who did you expect me to tell? I was in a jam’. ‘But why hadn’t you ever told me anything before?’ Rosa, who was quite at her ease again now, merely laughed. She changed her tactics. ‘It’s much nicer when you don’t tell. It’s bad luck to talk about it’. ‘She’s a fool’, thought Ginia, ‘she laughs now but only a short while back she was going to commit suicide. She’s not grown up yet, that’s what it is’. Meanwhile when she did her journeying to and fro in the street, even on her own, she thought how they were all very young and how you would have to be twenty years old all of a sudden to know how to go on.

  Ginia watched Rosa’s lover a whole evening, Pino with his bent nose, an undersized fellow whose only accomplishment was billiards; who never did anything and talked out of the side of his mouth. Ginia could not understand why Rosa still went to the pictures with him when she had found out what a nasty piece of work he was. She could not get that Sunday out of her head when they had all gone out in a boat together and she had noticed that Pino’s back was covered with freckles as if it was rusty. Now that she knew, she recalled that Rosa had gone off with him down under the trees. She had been stupid not to see how it was. But Rosa was stupider still and she told her so once more in the cinema-entrance.

  To think they had all gone in the boat so many times, had laughed and joked and the various couples lay around in each other’s arms. Ginia had seen the rest of them but had failed to notice Rosa and Pino. In the hot midday sun she and Tina, the lame girl, had remained alone in the boat. The others had got out on to the bank where their shouts could be heard. Tina, who had kept on her petticoat and blouse, said to Ginia, ‘If no one comes along. I shall undress and sunbathe’. Ginia said she would stand on guard but she found herself listening, instead, to the voices and silences from the shore. For a short time everything was quiet on the peaceful water. Tina had stretched herself full length in the sun with a towel round her waist. Then Ginia had jumped down on to the grass and walked around barefooted. She could no longer hear Amelia’s voice which had retreated beyond the others. Ginia, like a fool, imagining they were playing hide-and-seek, had not looked for them and had gone back to the boat.

  TWO

  One knew that Amelia, at any rate, was leading a different kind of life. Her brother was a mechanic but she only put in an appearance now and again during the evenings of that summer; she did not confide in any of them but joined in with their laughter for no other reason than because she was in her twentieth year. Ginia envied her her build, for Amelia’s legs showed off a good pair of stockings. She looked rather heavy round the hips in her bathing costume, however, and her features were faintly horsey. ‘I’m unemployed’, she remarked to Ginia one evening when she was having a good look at the latter’s dress, ‘so I have all the day before me to study my pattern. I’ve learnt how to cut out through working in a dressmaker’s shop like you. Can you?’ Ginia thought it nicer to have things specially made but did not say so. They had a stroll together that evening and Ginia accompanied her as far as her house because she felt wide-awake and sleep was out of the question. It had been raining and the asphalt and the trees had been washed clean; she felt the coolness against her cheeks.

  ‘You like going for walks, don’t you?’ said Amelia, laughing. ‘What does your brother Severino think about it?’ ‘Severino is working at this time. It’s his job to switch on all the lights and generally attend to them’. ‘So he’s the one that floodlights all the couples, is he? What sort of a get-up does he wear – like a gasman?’ ‘Of course not’, laughed Ginia. ‘He sees to all the switches at the Central Electric Works. He stands all night in front of a machine’. ‘So you two are on your own. Doesn’t he ever preach at you?’ Amelia spoke with the cheerful assurance of one who knew all about men’s ways and Ginia felt tho
roughly at ease with her. ‘Have you been out of a job long?’ she asked. ‘I have one actually. I’m being painted’.

  It sounded like a joke the way she said it and Ginia looked at her. ‘Painted, how?’ ‘Front face, profile, dressed, undressed, I’m what’s called a model’.

  Ginia listened with a puzzled expression so as to draw her out though she knew exactly what Amelia meant. What seemed incredible was that she should discuss it with her, for Amelia had never alluded to the matter directly in front of any of them and it was only through the concierge that Rosa had made the discovery.

  ‘Do you really go to a painter’s studio?’

  ‘I used to’, said Amelia, ‘But in summer it’s cheaper for an artist to paint out of doors. In winter it’s too cold to pose in the nude and so you hardly ever get a job then’. ‘Do you undress then?’ ‘Of course’, said Amelia.

  Then, taking Ginia by the arm, she continued, ‘It’s lovely work; you’ve nothing to do except just stand listening to them talking. I used to go to an artist who had a magnificent studio and when visitors came, they all took tea. You can learn a lot posing among that set – more than at the pictures’.

  ‘Did they used to come in while you were sitting?’

  ‘They asked permission. Women painters are best. Did you know that women painted as well? They pay a girl to pose for them in the nude. I can’t think why they don’t just stand in front of a mirror. I could understand it if they used a man as a model’.

  ‘But they do’, said Ginia.

  ‘I don’t say they don’t’, said Amelia, stopping in front of the door and giving a wink. ‘But they pay some models double. Bless you, variety’s the spice of life’.

  Ginia asked her why she did not come and call for her sometimes, and then went homeward alone, treading on the reflections she made on the asphalt road which had nearly dried in the warm night air. ‘She chatters too much about her own affairs; I suppose it’s being older’, thought Ginia, feeling happy. ‘If I led her sort of life, I’d be more discreet’. Ginia was a little disappointed when she realized the days were slipping by and Amelia had not called on her. It was clear enough that she had not been trying to make up to her that evening, which implies – reflected Ginia – that she tells everything to everybody and really is stupid. I expect she regards me as an infant in arms, ready to believe anything. One evening Ginia told a number of other girls that she had seen a picture in a shop for which Amelia had been the model.