The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories

by Jhumpa Lahiri

  An unusual case, Signora Nodier had got to the age of twenty-five, to thirty and beyond without marrying; furthermore, no one had so much as made an offer. This, despite the fact that she was distinguished and something like rich, owning land here and there throughout the province. Those who knew her when she was young still remember her expression as tending towards being beautiful, though not quite attaining beauty – and that is the only way to be seriously beautiful, and forever. To sum up, they found her disdainful. But no one was brave enough to admit it. It was a lot easier to say that she lacked ‘femininity’ or ‘vivacity’, the latter, and other such sorry tags, being the word most commonly used.

  As is the way in the provinces, when she reached thirty people ceased talking about her; that lasted for five or six years. But just as she was about to reach the age at which it is vaguely said of distinguished ladies who have contacts and come from a wealthy family that they ‘do good works’, the city suddenly learned that she was to marry General B. D.

  At the time, this seemed odd (for in the provinces even the most obvious things seem strange), though in truth no one managed to explain why. When, however, a little later, they managed to get to know the general, seeing him at meals or out hunting, it finally came to people that if she had behaved in that way for years, defying the world with invariable calm, scorn, irony and shadowy suggestions of a presumably unhappy future, it was with the certainty that what had now happened would happen.

  Initially, the general was a disappointment. Then, suddenly, everyone found him to be elegant – slightly conventional, but elegant – and discovered that his elegance lay precisely in the fact that it had been noted only by chance, and after some time. From that point on, little by little it came to be acknowledged that he was a man of spirit and wit. ‘Ah, but he’s a man of spirit … But he has wit, let’s face it,’ they found themselves saying, as though they’d been contradicted or the matter was particularly important.

  If the truth be told, the general’s looks and manners had nothing of the soldier in them: his bearing was as unmilitary as one might reasonably be asked to put up with. He had been about in the world, and his assignments had been vaguely bureaucratic and political, he had taken part in campaigns only rarely and at a distance; no victory bore his name. On the other hand, he had never committed any errors or stupidities; he had never been the object of ridicule. That dispassionate irony with which he viewed his career and, at heart, all his actions, had always kept him from disaster. Be all that as it may, military figures – some of them celebrated, with names that appeared in the newspapers – often sought his advice.

  He arrived among us at the beginning of October. And for a few days, like some discreet tourist, he seemed to be everywhere, with a Scottie by his side. She was often absent. But no one noted how this absence was, in its own way, a reinforcement of her presence. Then one afternoon she was seen by someone or other hunting in the neighbourhood, dressed in fustian olive-brown and reddish riding boots; and the little Scottie dog was always by her side.

  By the end of the month the marriage ceremony took place and we never saw her again.

  As I found out later (and I confess I did everything in my power not to lose them from sight for too long), they had gone to live in an old country house of his to which, during the hunting season, he had long been accustomed to retire. But we heard nothing more about them. For that matter, even the locals seemed not to have had much to say – admitting, that is, that the locals could find much to interest them in a couple so reasonable, so self-contained and so little given to extravagance. Only a diary might have had something to say. But diaries, in which the gaps speak louder than words, are getting rarer and rarer; and in those days, I’d be willing to swear that Signora Nodier had not yet thought of keeping one.

  Every morning he went off hunting; and every morning, from the drawing-room window, she watched him disappear into the fields along with the little Scottie dog. Occasionally, she would open the window to call him back and remind him of something. On other occasions, when he had forgotten something, for instance, his knife – which happened not infrequently – she would hold up the missing object, waving her arms, and the dog would run up and carry it off in its mouth. Anyway, nothing more exciting than that happened; for such appearances, and no more, were what the servants and the gardeners could observe on any day of the week.

  Later, I also found out that the pair of them never made plans of any sort for the future, and often asked themselves what the next day would bring. In the autumn, the mist rose early on the river. Along the country roads, already hard with frost, there was no one to be seen. Sometimes the only sign of life was the flight of a wild duck; or else, at dusk, a child lazily wending his way home with a goat. It was therefore natural that in the late afternoon or evening their conversations were prolonged and frequent. But all those conversations bore upon the past. She could only feel truly sure of him when she had succeeded in conquering the entirety of his past.

  Once, when suddenly they had almost been without light due to a violent storm that broke over their fields, she asked him, among other things, about his old love affairs. The request was so natural that he didn’t even realize how very natural it was. That evening they talked to each other at great length; and when the maid knocked to bring them light, she was told to return later.

  For all that, however, she never became a personage; nor a legend, which is so easy to do in the country. She was ever lively, understanding and spirited. So sharp, in fact, that she understood perfectly well that in their behaviour there was a touch of selfishness, and that the hostility and antipathy of the people around them was therefore reasonable.

  But two days came whose effect, for a time at least, brought her back into touch with the world – despite the fact that she managed, in short order, to make those days ‘hers’: the day on which the general, together with his Scottie, left for a colonial war; and the day, seven months later, when she was apprised of his death.

  It was, I recall, in September, and the newspapers announced the event in two lines.

  But we learned of it only much later, accidentally, and via a misplaced vowel.

  It was (sometimes banality is inevitable) a terrible blow: the more so because she found it unjust, monstrous and alien to her natural order. ‘Oh my God,’ she would say, twisting handkerchief or glove, ‘why did this have to happen to me, to me? It’s different for other people … Yes it is, different, very different.’ ‘There’s no comparison,’ she added impatiently, as though overcoming some inner objection. ‘Don’t people forget? Don’t they forget a little more every day?’ And she named names; and thought that in this, above all else, people were all alike. Nor were moments lacking in which she was convinced that she was being persecuted by something more intelligent and personal than fate itself. She tried doing ill, then doing good, but both brought her poor returns, and if finally she settled on doing only good it was because, after all, that was a lot easier.

  She managed that for a few consecutive months. That is, until March. Then, occasionally, she was again seen out and about. She made the odd unnecessary purchase; sometimes she spoke briefly with someone. It was during this period that she began to keep a diary. ‘Ah, I’m no longer the same woman. I’ve become so good,’ she wrote a few days later, ‘that I now manage to look with a good heart on the happiness of others close to me. I am no longer offended. Is this possible? I don’t even feel envy …’ And then, four pages later: ‘I am seriously worried. I really don’t know what to do: I could give away half of myself …’ And more of the same.

  She was indeed disposed to yield half of her all: but certainly not to accept the other half that people necessarily wanted to give her in return. She soon had to realize that her gift could never be accepted unless she, in turn, accepted her reward. This was asking too much from her. To tell the truth, it was beyond her strength.

  Furthermore, her peasants no longer showed the respect they had in the
old days; they looked at her with a certain expression, as though she had some obscure guilt. For instance, the way in which she smiled at certain things, and at problems by which they swore; the way she was serene and distant, and offered them, fundamentally, little more than maternal irony, perhaps that of her own presence. ‘The general, well, he understood,’ she almost felt them thinking. ‘He realized that he had no time left … He went away just in time … He understood … But as for her, what’s she waiting for?’

  Thus it came about that she reduced herself to spending all her time in the house; and, because the grounds included an old chapel which she undertook to restore, she no longer went out even to go to church. This little island was, in fact, her definitive salvation and, little by little, the general’s death was slowly transmuted into a bearable unhappiness – into, I can only guess, a sort of eternal evening. She might not have withstood a further shock; certainly she wouldn’t have survived the extinction of her unhappiness. It was an unhappiness that she had constructed day by day, as others build, day by day, their own illusions. In its own way, that unhappiness was an illusion too: as to the past and as to the future. Yet it was absolutely necessary to her; it was, in fact, her self. The villa now constantly spoke of the general and what he had, in his day, meant to her: the old ways, serenity, good manners and more. But she took marvellous care to avoid anything or anyone who could bring back to life, or make vivid, those memories. Had this happened, grief would again have supplanted this gentle unhappiness of hers, and that she did not want. For instance, she refused to go to a memorial service for the general; nor would she read a speech that recalled his death. One day, certainly, those two events would have become memories, and she would have discovered them bit by bit. Now, however, they were part of life; they spoke of a day barely past; and life was too much for her.

  However, when she learned that a lady found herself in the area, a lady of whom many years before it had been said that she was an old flame of the general’s, she did not fail to invite her to visit. It must have been a strange encounter: highly refined, serious and at the same time faintly ridiculous, with the kind of absurdity that makes everything human. That day they, too, spoke at length. They spoke until, beyond the windows, the garden took on a certain violet tinge. Then, somewhat surprised, her visitor rose. At that point she was able to make out, beyond the ploughed field and the vineyards, fleeting trails of smoke.

  ‘Ah, his old ducks,’ she said suddenly, looking out on that rural squalor. She said it with a smile, as someone looking at an old childhood portrait discovers in that image the little defects of a person to whom one wishes well.

  ‘What’s that? You mean to say even ‘then’ he went hunting?’ asked Signora Nodier, she too coming to the windows. And looked at her with a smile, for her visitor too was a little failing of the general’s.

  ‘Yes, but a dreadful hunter, then,’ her visitor said, laughing. ‘Not everyone wanted him around. They even found excuses to avoid him. Once they went so far as to invite him on the wrong day … Luckily, he never found out.’

  ‘He never confessed as much to me,’ Signora Nodier brought out, after briefly consulting her memories. ‘But I think I always suspected that was the case.’ And she added, as if to herself, ‘He took it too seriously to be good at it.’

  ‘Almost solemnly,’ her visitor added.

  ‘True, true,’ agreed Signora Nodier, almost grateful for a conclusion that made the general come alive. ‘Absolutely true, solemn.’

  And the pair of them began to talk of his defects: in such a way that they didn’t seem to be speaking of one who was dead or alive, but of a myth, of the presence of one who combined a little of each, of life and death. Neither did either of them realize that the death, as well as other even sadder events, had taken place barely half a year earlier.

  Signora Nodier considered that day one of the most important, and most ‘hers’.

  She was to know another such, and more important still.

  One evening two years later, as the oldest of the maids was ironing, there was a ring at the gate. Against the garden lamp one could see snowflakes falling, and in between, rain. It was deep winter. After looking out the window, she said, turning to the young maid, ‘You go, Agata,’ and the other returned to the other ironing.

  She had to get up a few moments later, however, for though panting from her run across the garden, and though her feet were wet and a few flakes of snow clung to her hair, Agata reappeared smiling and excited, chattering about someone who stood outside the door. Then a soldier came in. Then a dog. The old woman immediately recognized the dog as the general’s Scottie.

  The soldier stood there looking around, bewildered. He knew nothing: only that, thanks to an old dog he’d never seen before, handed over to him by another soldier, he’d had to take a huge detour; that he was tired, it was raining and his feet were wet. He found the whole thing exceedingly strange.

  He found it even stranger when the young maid returned more than a half-hour later to tell him that her mistress thanked him profusely, found his gesture in bringing back the dog splendid, but on that evening couldn’t possibly receive him – ‘in no way could receive him’ – and accompanied him back to the gate.

  ‘Giovanna,’ she said on her return, ‘I’m taking the dog over to the farmhouse.’

  ‘In this weather?’ the old woman said, startled. ‘Can’t he sleep next to the fire? And what if ‘she’ wants to see him? Is she supposed to go over there?’

  ‘No, not in the house. Not here,’ the young maid said, standing with the dog at the open door. Outside you could still see snow and rain, and a row of dripping hedges. She looked for something to put over her head, but found nothing better than an old newspaper, which she took, and left. From the top step she turned once more to the old woman. ‘Be ready,’ she said. ‘She’ll call you to give you a note.’

  But no note came from Signora Nodier the whole of the next day. Nor the day after. She stayed in her room, and the only time she came down was to ask the gardener something. But on the third day the note was on the table, addressed to Quintilio, the oldest of the peasants on her land.

  I had access to it only many years later.

  My dear Quintilio,

  You won’t mind, after so many years in which we haven’t seen each other, if I ask you to do me a last favour? It’s a big favour, but it is the last I will ask. You can be sure of that. I beg above all, if you come, not to question me, don’t ask me twice to explain myself, as if you hadn’t understood the first time. The stranger this request seems to you, the better you’ll have understood. But how silly I am! You’re doing me a favour (you’ll do it, won’t you, Quintilio?) and it is I who impose conditions. I really no longer understand myself. With friendly greetings, to you, to old Maria, to the old Tromps and to the old Felicità. All old, now. How sad!

  There was a postscript: ‘Don’t refuse me this favour, Quintilio. If for some reason you think you can’t do me this favour, do it for the little girl you once taught to fish.’

  The old peasant accepted on the spot.

  A week later, I happened to be passing nearby and paid her a visit.

  As always, she received me well, and I had the impression that my conversation was not displeasing to her. I remember that at one point she rose and left me alone for a moment, so I was able to look around the room. To do that in her presence would have struck me as offensive.

  Thus I could see paintings, portraits, a few sticks of queer furniture, a few old magazines and an infinity of tasteful objects: the whole of it looking like someone who suddenly, of her own free will, without dying, has stopped. Last, because it was partly hidden in the shadow of a curtain, I saw the embalmed figure of a little Scottie dog. This, too, I remember as partaking of myth, but also of the present – somewhat more than a memory, almost a pale memory.

  Then she came back, apologized and began to talk again. From time to time I picked up noises from the road, and I kept m
y eyes fixed on her; strange as it may sound, she seemed nearly happy.

  This is a true story.

  ‘Elegia alla signora Nodier’

  Published under the pseudonym Sandro Nardi in the journal Cronache (18 January 1947), and later included in Casa d’altri e altri racconti (Einaudi, 1980).

  Fausta Cialente

  1898–1994

  Cialente is a writer who is hard to track down. Practically out of print in Italy, her work seldom appears in anthologies. And yet she won the Strega Prize, at the age of seventy-eight, for a novel called Le quattro ragazze Wiesleberger (The Four Wiesleberger Girls). Both celebrated and ignored by critics, Cialente herself declared that she was ‘everywhere a foreigner’. But this condition, combined with her nomadic, cosmopolitan perspective, fuelled her artistry. She was born in Cagliari, but, given that during her childhood her family moved around Italy, is not regarded a Sardinian writer. After marrying Enrico Terni, a Jewish composer, she moved to Alexandria, in Egypt, where she lived until 1947, and started writing. Her first novel, Natalia, published in 1930, was banned by Fascist censors because it portrayed a lesbian relationship. An outspoken anti-Fascist, Cialente wrote no fiction after the war, turning to journalism. In describing her stories, set both in Egypt and in Italy, she noted that her characters were almost always either ordinary people or children. The premise of ‘Malpasso’, set in an obscure mountain town, is about a stranger who interacts with an established community. An evocative portrait of place, it is at heart a story about storytelling itself and, ever pertinently for our times, about the truth as stated from a woman’s point of view as opposed to a man’s. Cialente’s stories were gathered together and published only after she became a finalist for the Strega Prize in 1961. A translator of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, she remained rootless throughout her life, and died in a small English village at the age of ninety-five.