The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories

by Jhumpa Lahiri

  Only when I woke up in the morning was my heart at peace. I would turn my head against hers in our warm bed and lie close beside her as she slept (or was pretending to), my breath ruffling her hair. Then Cilia, with a drowsy smile, would put her arms around me. How different from the days when I woke alone, cold and disheartened, to stare at the first gleam of dawn!

  Cilia loved me. Once she was out of bed, she found fresh joys in everything she did as she moved around our room, dressing herself, opening the windows, stealing a cautious glance at me. If I settled myself at the little table, she walked quietly so as not to disturb me; if I went out, her eyes followed me to the door; when I came home she sprang up quickly to greet me.

  There were days when I did not want to go home at all. It irritated me to think I should inevitably find her there, waiting for me, even though she learned to pretend she took no special interest; I should sit beside her, tell her more or less the same things, or probably nothing at all. We should look at one another with distaste and a smile. It would be the same tomorrow and the next day, and always. Such thoughts entrapped me whenever the day was foggy and the sun looked grey. If, on the other hand, there was a lovely day when the air was clear and the sun blazed down on my head, or a perfume in the wind enfolded and enraptured me, I would linger in the streets, wishing that I still lived alone, free to stroll around till midnight and get a meal of some sort at the pub on the corner of the street. I had always been a lonely man, and it seemed to me to count for a great deal that I was not unfaithful to Cilia.

  She, waiting for me at home, began to take in sewing, to earn a little. A neighbour gave her work, a certain Amalia, a woman of thirty or so, who once invited us to dinner. She lived alone in the room below ours, and gradually fell into the habit of bringing the work upstairs to Cilia so that they could pass the afternoon together. Her face was disfigured by a frightful scar – when she was a little girl she had pulled a boiling saucepan down on her head. Her two sorrowful, timid eyes, full of longing, flinched away when anyone looked at her, as if their humility could excuse the distortion of her features. She was a good girl. I remarked to Cilia that Amalia seemed to me like her elder sister. One day, for a joke, I said: ‘If I should run away and leave you, one fine day, would you go and live with her?’

  ‘She’s had such bad luck all her life. I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to make love to her!’ Cilia teased me. Amalia called me ‘Sir’ and was shy in my presence. Cilia thought this was madly funny. I found it rather flattering.

  3.

  It was a bad thing for me that I regarded my scanty intellectual attainments as a substitute for a regular trade. It lay at the root of so many of my wrong ideas and evil actions. But my education could have proved a good means of communion with Cilia, if only I had been more consistent. Cilia was very quick, anxious to learn everything I knew myself because, loving me so much, she could not bear to feel unworthy of me. She wanted to understand my every thought. And – who knows? – if I could have given her this simple pleasure I might have learned, in the quiet intimacy of our joint occupation, what a fine person she really was, how real and beautiful our life together, and perhaps Cilia would still be alive at my side, with her lovely smile that in two years I froze from her lips.

  I started off enthusiastically, as I always do. Cilia’s education consisted of a few back numbers of serial novels, the news in the daily papers, and a hard, precocious experience of life itself. What was I to teach her? She very much wanted to learn French and indeed, heaven knows how, she managed to piece together scraps of it by searching through my dictionaries when she was left alone at home. But I aspired to something better than that and wanted to teach her to read properly, to appreciate the finest books. I kept a few of them – my treasures – on the little table. I tried to explain to her the finer points of novels and poems, and Cilia did her best to follow me. No one excels me in recognizing the beauty, the ‘rightness’ of a thought or a story, and explaining it in glowing terms. I put a great deal of effort into making her feel the freshness of ancient pages, the truth of sentiments expressed long before she and I were born, how varied, how glorious, life had been for so many many men at so many different periods. Cilia would listen with close attention, asking questions that I often found embarrassing. Sometimes as we strolled in the streets or sat eating our supper in silence, she would tell me in her candid voice of certain doubts she had, and once when I replied without conviction or with impatience – I don’t remember which – she burst out laughing.

  I remember that my first present to her, as her husband, was a book, The Daughter of the Sea. I gave it to her a month after our wedding, when we started reading lessons. Until then I had not bought her anything – nothing for the house, no new clothes – because we were too poor. Cilia was delighted and made a new cover for the book, but she never read it.

  Now and then, when we had managed to save enough, we went to a cinema, and there Cilia really enjoyed herself. An additional attraction, for her, was that she could snuggle up close to me, and now and then ask me for explanations that she could understand. She never let Amalia come to the cinema with us, though one day the poor girl asked if she could. She explained to me that we got to know each other best of all in a cinema, and in that blessed darkness we had to be alone together.

  Amalia came to our place more and more often. This, and my well-deserved disappointments, soon made me first neglect our reading lessons, and finally stop them altogether. Then, if I was in a good mood, I amused myself by joking with the two girls, and Amalia lost a little of her shyness. One evening, as I came home very late from the college with my nerves on edge, she came and stared me full in the face, with a gleam of reproof and suspicion in her timid glance. I felt more disgusted than ever by the frightful scar on her face, and spitefully I tried to make out what her features had been before they were destroyed. I remarked to Cilia, when we were alone, that Amalia, as a child, must have been very like her.

  ‘Poor thing,’ said Cilia. ‘She spends every penny she earns trying to get cured. She hopes that then she’ll find a husband.’

  ‘But don’t all women know how to get a husband?’

  ‘I’ve already found mine,’ Cilia smiled.

  ‘Suppose what happened to Amalia had happened to you?’ I sneered.

  Cilia came close to me. ‘Wouldn’t you want me any more?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But what’s upset you this evening? Don’t you like Amalia to come up here? She gives me work and helps me …’

  What had got into me – and I couldn’t get rid of it – was the thought that Cilia was just another Amalia. I felt disgusted and furious with both of them. My eyes were hard as I stared at Cilia, and the tender look she gave me only made me pity her, irritating me still more. On my way home I had met a husband with two dirty brats clinging round his neck, and behind him a thin worn-out little woman, his wife. I imagined what Cilia would look like when she was old and ugly, and the thought clutched me by the throat.

  Outside, the stars were shining. Cilia looked at me in silence. ‘I’m going for a walk,’ I told her with a bitter smile, and I went out.

  4.

  I had no friends and I realized, now and then, that Cilia was my whole life. As I walked the streets I thought about us and felt troubled that I did not earn enough to repay her by keeping her in comfort, so that I needn’t feel ashamed when I went home. I never wasted a penny – I did not even smoke – and, proud of that, I considered my thoughts were at least my own. But what could I make of those thoughts? On my way home I looked at people and wondered how so many of them had managed to succeed in life. Desperately I longed for changes, for something fresh and exciting.

  I used to hang around the railway station, thrilled by the smoke and the bustle. For me, good fortune has always meant adventure in faraway places – a liner crossing the ocean, arrival at some exotic port, the clang of metal, shrill, foreign voices – I dreamt of it all the time. One evening I stopped sh
ort, terrified by the sudden realization that if I didn’t hurry up and travel somewhere with Cilia while she was still young and in love with me, I should never go at all. A fading wife and a squalling child would, for ever, prevent me. If only we really had money, I thought again. You can do anything with money.

  Good fortune must be deserved, I told myself. Shoulder every load that life may bring. I am married but I do not want a child. Is that why I’m so wretched? Should I be luckier if I had a son?

  To live always wrapped up in oneself is a depressing thing, because a brain that is habitually secretive does not hesitate to follow incredibly stupid trains of thought that mortify the man who thinks them. This was the only origin of the doubts that plagued me.

  Sometimes my longing for faraway places filled my mind even in bed. If, on a still and windless night, I suddenly caught the wild sound of a train whistle in the distance, I would start up from Cilia’s side with all my dreams reawakened.

  One afternoon, when I was passing the station without even stopping, a face I knew suddenly appeared in front of me and gave a cry of greeting. Malagigi: I hadn’t seen him for ten years. We shook hands and stood there exchanging courtesies. He was no longer the ugly, spiteful ink-spotted little devil I knew at school, always playing jokes in the lavatory, but I recognized that grin of his at once. ‘Malagigi! Still alive, then?’

  ‘Alive, and a qualified accountant.’ His voice had changed. It was a man speaking to me now.

  ‘Are you off somewhere, too?’ he asked. ‘Guess where I’m going!’ As he spoke he picked up a fine leather suitcase that toned perfectly with his smart new raincoat and the elegance of his tie. Gripping my wrist he went on: ‘Come to the train with me. I’m going to Genoa.’

  ‘I’m in a hurry.’

  ‘Then I leave for China!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘It’s true. Can’t a man go to China? What have you got against China? Instead of talking like that, wish me luck! Perhaps I may stay out there.’

  ‘But what’s your job?’

  ‘I’m going to China. Come and see me off.’

  ‘No, I really can’t spare the time.’

  ‘Then come and have coffee with me, to say goodbye. You’re the last man I shall talk to, here.’

  We had coffee there in the station, at the counter, while Malagigi, full of excitement, told me in fits and starts all about himself and his prospects. He was not married. He’d fathered a baby, but luckily it died. He had left school after I did, without finishing. He thought of me once, when he had to take an exam a second time. He’d gained his education in the battle of life. Now all the big firms had offered him a job. And he spoke four languages. And they were sending him to China.

  I said again that I was in a hurry (though it was not true), and managed to get away from him, feeling crushed and overwhelmed. I reached home still upset by the chance meeting, my thoughts in a turmoil. How could he rise from such a drab boyhood to the audacious height of a future like that? Not that I envied Malagigi, or even liked him; but to see, unexpectedly superimposed on his grey background, which had been mine, too, his present colourful and assured existence, such as I could glimpse only in dreams, was torment to me.

  Our room was empty, because now Cilia often went downstairs to work in our neighbour’s room. I stayed there a while, brooding in the soft darkness lit only by the little blue glow of the gas jet under the saucepan bubbling gently on the stove.

  5.

  I passed many evenings thus, alone in the room, waiting for Cilia, pacing up and down or lying on the bed, absorbed in that silent emptiness as the dusk slowly deepened into dark. Subdued or distant noises – the shouts of children, the bustle of the street, the cries of birds – reached me only faintly. Cilia soon realized that I didn’t want to be bothered with her when I came home, and she would put her head out of Amalia’s room, still sewing, to hear me pass and call to me. I didn’t care whether she heard me or not, but if she did I would say something or other. Once I asked Amalia, quite seriously, why she didn’t come up to our room any more, where there was plenty of light. Amalia said nothing; Cilia looked away and her face grew red.

  One night, for something to say, I told her about Malagigi and made her laugh gaily at that funny little man. Then I added: ‘Fancy him making a fortune and going to China! I wish it had been me!’

  ‘I should like it, too,’ Cilia sighed, ‘if we went to China.’

  I gave a wry grin. ‘In a photograph, perhaps, if we sent one to Malagigi.’

  ‘Why not one for ourselves?’ she said. ‘Oh, George, we haven’t ever had a photograph of us together.’

  ‘No money.’

  ‘Do let’s have a photograph.’

  ‘But we oughtn’t to afford it. We’re together day and night, and anyway I don’t like photographs.’

  ‘We are married and we have no record of it. Let’s have just one!’

  I did not reply.

  ‘It wouldn’t cost much. I’ll pay for it.’

  ‘Get it done with Amalia.’

  Next morning Cilia lay with her face to the wall, her hair over her eyes. She would not take any notice of me, or even look at me. I caressed her a little, then realized she was resisting me, so I jumped out of bed in a rage. Cilia got up, too, washed her face and gave me some coffee, her manner quiet and cautious, her eyes downcast. I went away without speaking to her.

  An hour later I came back again. ‘How much is there in the savings book?’ I shouted. Cilia looked at me in surprise. She was sitting on the stool, unhappy and bewildered.

  ‘I don’t know. You’ve got it. About three hundred lire, I think.’

  ‘Nearly three hundred and sixteen. Here it is,’ I flung the roll of notes on the table. ‘Spend it as you like. Let’s have a high old time! It’s all yours.’

  Cilia stood up and came over to face me. ‘Why have you done this, George?’

  ‘Because I’m a fool. Listen! I’d rather not talk about it. When money is in your pocket it doesn’t count any more. D’you still want that photograph?’

  ‘But, George, I want you to be happy.’

  ‘I am happy.’

  ‘I do love you so much.’

  ‘I love you, too.’ I took her by the arm, sat down, and pulled her on my knee. ‘Put your head here, on my shoulder.’ My voice was indulgent and intimate. Cilia said nothing and leaned her cheek against mine. ‘When shall we go?’ I asked.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she whispered.

  ‘Then listen!’ I held the back of her neck and smiled at her. Cilia, still trembling, threw her arms around my shoulders and tried to kiss me.

  ‘Darling!’ I said. ‘Let’s make plans. We have three hundred lire. Let’s drop everything and go on a little trip. Quickly! Now! If we think it over we’ll change our minds. Don’t tell anyone about it, not even Amalia. We’ll only be away a day. It will be the honeymoon we didn’t have.’

  ‘George, why wouldn’t you take me away then? You said it was a silly idea, then.’

  ‘Yes, but this isn’t a honeymoon. You see, now we know each other. We’re good friends. Nobody knows we’re going. And, besides, we need a holiday. Don’t you?’

  ‘Of course, George. I’m so happy. Where shall we go?’

  ‘I don’t know, but we’ll go at once. Would you like us to go to the sea? To Genoa?’

  6.

  Once we were on the train, I showed a certain preoccupation. As we started, Cilia was almost beside herself with delight, held my hand and tried to make me talk. Then, finding me moody and unresponsive, she quickly understood and settled down quietly, looking out of the window with a happy smile. I remained silent, staring into nothingness, listening to the rhythmic throb of the wheels on the rails as it vibrated through my whole body. There were other people in the carriage, but I scarcely noticed them. Fields and hills were flashing past. Cilia, sitting opposite and leaning on the windowpane, seemed to be listening to something, too, but now and then she glanced swiftly in my
direction and tried to smile. So she spied on me, at a distance.

  When we arrived it was dark, and at last we found somewhere to stay, in a large, silent hotel, hidden among the trees of a deserted avenue, after going up and down an eternity of tortuous streets, making enquiries. It was a grey, cold night that made me want to stride along with my nose in the air. Instead, Cilia, tired to death, was dragging on my arm and I was only too glad to find somewhere to sit down. We had wandered through so many brightly lit streets, so many dark alleys that brought our hearts into our mouths, but we had never reached the sea. No one took any notice of us. We looked like any couple out for a stroll, except for our tendency to step off the pavements, and Cilia’s anxious glances at the houses and passers-by.

  That hotel would do for us: nothing elegant about it. A bony young fellow with his sleeves rolled up was eating at a white table. We were received by a tall, fierce-looking woman wearing a coral necklace. I was glad to sit down. Walking with Cilia never left me free to absorb myself in what I saw, or in myself. Preoccupied and ill-at-ease, I nevertheless had to keep her beside me and answer her, at least with gestures. Now, all I wanted – and how I wanted it – was to look around and get to know in my heart of hearts this unknown city. That was precisely why I had come.

  We waited downstairs to order supper, without even going upstairs to see our room or discussing terms. I was attracted by that young fellow with his auburn whiskers and his vague, lonely manner. On his forearm was a faded tattoo mark, and as he went away he picked up a patched blue jacket.

  It was midnight when we had our supper. At our little table, Cilia laughed a great deal at the disdainful air of the landlady. ‘She thinks we’re only just married,’ she faltered. Then, her weary eyes full of tenderness, she asked me: ‘And are we really?’ as she stroked my hand.

  We enquired about places in the neighbourhood. The harbour was only a hundred yards away, at the end of the avenue. ‘Let’s go and see it for a minute,’ said Cilia. She was fit to drop, but she wanted to take that little walk with me.